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the death was wholly responsible for Laura's condition. That alone could not have transformed her into this pale doll creature who was led by the elbow and helped to sit in Ezawa's gray Cadillac, who pressed her face against the smoked glass window and gazed wanly back at the house. Her apparent callousness toward Magnusson must, Jocundra thought, have masked real feelings which had most contributed to her breakdown.

'She'll be fine,' said Edman at the staff meeting later in the day. 'You knew there'd be some trauma.'

But Jocundra had not known there was a potential for collapse, for derangement, and she was outraged. 'The end will be difficult,' a vastly paternal Edman had told her at the briefing before she left Tulane. 'But you'll take from it something very human and strengthening.' And she had swallowed it! She wanted nothing more to do with lies or with Edman, who was the father of lies; she would prepare as best she could for the inevitable crash of Donnell's ending, and afterward she would wash her hands of the project.

For the next two weeks she intensified her commitment toward cultivating a distance between herself and Don-nell, and attempted as well to create distance between herself and the project, though this did not prove easy. The atmosphere of Shadows had grown more muted and clandestine than ever. It was as if there had been a unity in the house, some league now dissolved by Magnusson's death, and no one could be certain of the new alignments which might emerge. The therapists passed each other in the hall with averted eyes; French and Monroe hid behind their bedroom doors, and Richmond wandered by himself. The doctors broke off whispered conferences whenever anyone of lesser authority came near and withdrew to the upstairs offices. Even the ubiquitous ferns in their brass pots seemed instruments of subterfuge, their feathery fronds capable of concealing sensitive antennae. Yet despite this divisiveness, or because of it, everyone pried and eavesdropped and agitated. Once Dr Brauer pulled Jocundra aside and heaped invective upon Edman who, he said, spent most of his time on the telephone to Tulane, begging the administration to keep hands off, not to disrupt the process.

'But don't you think a disruption is necessary? Haven't the patients been exposed to enough of Edman's incompetence?' When she shrugged, unwilling to join in any power struggle, he drew his sour, thin features into a measly smile and asked, 'How's Harrison doing?'

'Frankly,' she said, furious at his false concern, 'I don't care who runs this damned place, and as for Harrison, he's dying!'

For several days Jocundra worried that Donnell had learned something about his own situation from Magnus-son's death. She picked up a change in him, a change too slippery and circumstantial to classify. On the surface it appeared to have affected him in a positive way: he redoubled his efforts at walking; his social attitudes improved, and he went poking about the house, striking up conversations with the orderlies; he finished his story and started a new one. But when they talked - and they talked far less often than before - the exchanges were oddly weighted. One afternoon he sat her down and had her read his story. It was a violent and involuted fantasy set upon a world with a purple sun, specifically within a village bounded by a great forest, and it dealt with the miserable trials of an arthritic old tradesman, his vengeance against an evil queen and her black-clad retinue, eerie magic, grim conclusions for all. The circuitous plot and grisly horrors unsettled Jocundra. It was as if a curl of purple smoke had leaked out of the manila folder and brought her a whiff of some ornate Persian hell.

'It's beautifully written,' she said, 'but there's too much blood for my taste.'

'Yeah, but will it sell?' He laughed. 'Got to make a living somehow when I get out of here. Right?'

'I prefer your poetry.' She shut the folder and studied a fray in her skirt.

'No money in poetry.' He walked to the desk and stood over her, forcing her to look at him. 'Seriously, I'd like to have your opinion. I want to live in the city for a change, travel, and that takes money. Do you think I can earn it this way?'

She could only manage a puny, 'Yes, I suppose,' but he appeared satisfied with her answer.

Donnell's new independence allowed Jocundra to cultivate her distance. Though the cameras continued to break down -