I was walking the telephone wires upside-down, the sky underfoot cold and fiatwith a few hard bright stars sparsely scattered about it, when I thought how itwould take only an instant's weakness to step off to the side and fall upforever into the night. A kind of wildness entered me then and I began to run.

Electric Motors-Controls-Parts. Then, where the slope steepened, along thecurving snake of rowhouses that went the full quarter mile up to the Ridge.Twice I overtook pedestrians, hunched and bundled, heads doggedly down, out onincomprehensible errands. They didn't notice me, of course. They never do. Theantenna farm was visible from here. I could see the Seven Sisters spangled withred lights, dependent on the earth like stalactites. "Where are you running to,little one?" one tower whispered in a crackling, staticky voice. I think it wasHegemone.

"Fuck off," I said without slackening my pace, and they all chuckled.

Cars mumbled by. This was ravine country, however built up, and the far side ofthe road, too steep and rocky for development, was given over to trees andgarbage. Ham.burger wrappings and white plastic trash bags rustled in theirwake. I was running full-out now.

About a block or so from the Ridge, I stumbled and almost fell. I slapped an armacross a telephone pole and just managed to catch myself in time. Aghast at myown carelessness, I hung there, dizzy and alarmed. The ground overhead was blackas black, an iron roof, yet somehow was as anxious as a hound to leap upon me,crush me flat, smear me to nothingness. I stared up at it, horrified.

Somebody screamed my name.

I turned. A faint blue figure clung to a television antenna atop a small,stuccoed brick duplex. Charlie's Widow. She pointed an arm that flickered withsilver fire down Ripka Street. I slewed about to see what was coming after me.