more fingers than the one he uses to stir the pot in Ireland. He has a great many powerful American friends, and some of his friends are our friends... that's the nature of politics; a cat's cradle woven by men who for the most part belong in rooms with rubber walls. Killing Mr O'Banion would be a great political risk. But he keeps a little bit of fluff on the side. She was the one I was supposed to kill."
"As a warning," Brian said in a low, fascinated voice.
"Yes. As a warning."
Almost a full minute passed as the two men sat in the cockpit, looking at each other. The only sound was the sleepy drone of the jet engines. Brian's eyes were shocked and somehow very young. Nick only looked weary.
"If we get out of this," Brian said at last, "if we get back, will you carry through with it?"
Nick shook his head. He did this slowly, but with great finality. "I believe I've had what the Adventist blokes like to call a soul conversion, old mate of mine. No more midnight creeps or extreme-prejudice jobs for Mrs Hopewell's boy Nicholas. If we get out of this - a proposition I find rather shaky just now - I believe I'll retire."
"And do what?"
Nick looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two and then said, "Well... I suppose I could take flying lessons."
Brian burst out laughing. After a moment, Mrs Hopewell's boy Nicholas joined him.
9
Thirty-five minutes later, daylight began to seep back into the main cabin of Flight 29. Three minutes later it might have been mid-morning; fifteen minutes after that it might have been noon.
Laurel looked around and saw that Dinah's sightless eyes were open.
Yet were they entirely sightless? There was something in them, something just beyond definition, which made Laurel wonder. She felt a sense of unknown awe creep into her, a feeling which almost touched upon fear.
She reached out and gently grasped one of Dinah's hands. "Don't try to talk," she said quietly. "If you're awake, Dinah, don't try to talk - just listen. We're in the air. We're going back, and you're going to be all right - I promise you that."
Dinah's hand tightened on hers, and after a moment Laurel realized the little girl was tugging her forward. She leaned over the secured stretcher. Dinah spoke in a tiny voice that seemed to Laurel a perfect scale model of her former voice.
"Don't worry about me, Laurel. I got... what I wanted."
"Dinah, you shouldn't - "
The unseeing brown eyes moved toward the sound of Laurel's voice. A little smile touched Dinah's bloody mouth. "I saw," that tiny voice, frail as a glass reed, told her. "I saw through Mr Toomy's eyes. At the beginning, and then again at the end. It was better at the end. At the start, everything looked mean and nasty to him. It was better at the end."
Laurel looked at her with helpless wonder.
The girl's hand let go of Laurel's and rose waveringly to touch her cheek. "He wasn't such a bad guy, you know." She coughed. Small flecks of blood flew from her mouth.
"Please, Dinah," Laurel said. She had a sudden sensation that she could almost see through the little blind girl, and this brought a feeling of stifling, directionless panic. "Please don't try to talk anymore."
Dinah smiled. "I saw you." she said. "You are beautiful, Laurel. Everything was beautiful... even the things that were dead. It was so wonderful to... you know... just to see."
She drew in one of her tiny sips of air, let it out, and simply didn't take the next one. Her sightless eyes now seemed to be looking far beyond Laurel Stevenson.
"Please breathe, Dinah," Laurel said. She took the girl's hands in hers and began to kiss them repeatedly, as if she could kiss life back into that which was now beyond it. It was not fair for Dinah to die after she had saved them all; no God could demand such a sacrifice, not even for people who had somehow stepped outside of time itself. "Please breathe, please, please, please breathe."
But Dinah did not breathe. After a long time, Laurel returned the girl's hands to her lap and looked fixedly into her pale, still face. Laurel waited for her own eyes to fill up with tears, but no tears came. Yet her heart ached with fierce sorrow and her mind beat with its own deep and outraged