Hannibal Page 0,19

were mounted on the walls, some high, others at eye level. One camera high in the corner tracked Starling and Margot Verger, its lens rotating to focus.

Starling was past the point where the sight of a brown child pierced her, but she was keenly aware of these children. Their cheerful industry with the toys was pleasant to see as she and Margot Verger passed through the room.

"Mason likes to watch the kids," Margot Verger said. "It scares them to see him, all but the littlest ones, so he does it this way. They ride ponies after. They're day-care kids out of child welfare in Baltimore."

Mason Verger's chamber is approached only through his bathroom, a facility worthy of a spa that takes up the entire width of the wing. It is institutional-looking, all steel and chrome and industrial carpet, with wide- doored showers, stainless-steel tubs with lifting devices over them, coiled orange hoses, steam rooms and vast glass cabinets of unguents from the Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The air in the bathroom was still steam- from recent use and the scents of balsam and wintergreen hung in the air.

Starling could see light under the door to Mason Verger's chamber. It went out as his sister touched the doorknob.

A seating area in the corner of Mason Verger's chamber was severely lit from above. A passable print of William Blake's "The Ancient of Days" hung above the couch-God measuring with his calipers. The picture was draped with black to commemorate the recent passing of the Verger patriarch. The rest of the room was dark.

From the darkness came the sound of a machine working rhythmically, sighing at each stroke.

"Good afternoon, Agent Starling."

A resonant voice mechanically amplified, the fricative f lost out of afternoon.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Verger," Starling said into the darkness, the overhead light hot on the top of her head. Afternoon was someplace else. Afternoon did.not enter here.

"Have a seat."

Going to have to do this. Now is good. Now is called.for.

"Mr. Verger, the discussion we'll have is in the nature of a deposition and I'll need to tape-record it. Is that all right with you?"

"Sure."

The voice came between the sighs of the machine, the sibilant s lost from the word. "Margot, I think you can leave us now.

Without a look at Starling, Margot Verger left in a whistle of riding pants.

"Mr. Verger, I'd like to attach this microphone to your - clothing or your pillow if you're comfortable with that, or I'll call a nurse to do it if you prefer."

"By all means," he said, minus the b and the m. He waited for power from the next mechanical exhalation. "You can do it yourself, Agent Starling. I'm right over here."

There were no light switches Starling could find at once. She thought she might see better with the glare out of her eyes and she went into the darkness, one hand before her, toward the smell of wintergreen and balsam.

She was closer to the bed than she thought when he turned on the light.

Starling's face did not change. Her hand holding the clip-on microphone jerked backward, perhaps an inch.

Her first thought was separate from the feelings in her chest and stomach; it was the observation that his speech anomalies resulted from his total lack of lips. Her second thought was the recognition that he was not blind. His single blue eye was looking at her through a sort of monocle with a tube attached that kept the eye damp, as it lacked a lid. For the rest, surgeons years ago had done what they could with expanded skin grafts over bone.

Mason Verger, noseless and lipless, with no soft tissue on his face, was all teeth, like a creature of the deep, deep ocean. Inured as we are to masks, the shock, in seeing him is delayed. Shock comes with the recognition that this is a human face with a mind behind it. It churns you with its movement, the articulation of the jaw, the turning of the eye to see you. To see your normal face.

Mason Verger's hair is handsome and, oddly, the hardest thing to look at. Black flecked with gray, it is plaited in a ponytail long enough to reach the floor if it is brought back over his pillow. Today his plaited hair is in a big coil on his chest above the turtle-shell respirator. Human hair beneath the blue-john ruin, the plaits shining like lapping scales.

Under the sheet, Mason Verger's long-paralyzed body tapered away