He wrenched the banister free and began stabbing into the rubble with its broken end.

I looked stupidly at him. “How do you know?”

He jabbed viciously at the mess. “Get a pickaxe. This stuff’s hard as rock.” He looked up at me impatiently. “Hurry!”

The incident officer was someone I didn’t know. I was glad. Nelson would have refused to give me a pickaxe without the necessary authorization and lectured me instead on departmentalization of duties. This officer, who was younger than me and broken out in spots under his powdering of brick dust, didn’t have a pickaxe, but he gave me two shovels without any argument.

The dust and smoke were clearing a bit by the time I started back across the mounds, and a shower of flares drifted down over by the river, lighting everything in a fuzzy, over-bright light like headlights in a fog. I could see Jack on his hands and knees halfway down the mound, stabbing with the banister. He looked like he was murdering someone with a knife, plunging it in again and again.

Another shower of flares came down, much closer. I ducked and hurried across to Jack, offering him one of the shovels.

“That’s no good,” he said, waving it away.

“What’s wrong? Can’t you hear the voice any more?”

He went on jabbing with the banister. “What?” he said, and looked in the flare’s dazzling light like he had no idea what I was talking about.

“The voice you heard,” I said. “Has it stopped calling?”

“It’s this stuff,” he said. “There’s no way to get a shovel into it. Did you bring any baskets?”

I hadn’t, but further down the mound I had seen a large tin saucepan. I fetched it for him and began digging. He was right, of course. I got one good shovelful and then struck an end of a floor joist and bent the blade of the shovel. I tried to get it under the joist so I could pry it upward, but it was wedged under a large section of beam further on. I gave it up, broke off another of the banisters, and got down beside Jack.