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here' - she tapped the heart - 'and then, after it had been cleaned, they were released to start all over.' She cocked an eyebrow, as if expecting a reaction.

'What was it for?' asked Jocundra. The apparent use-lessness of the thing, its death-powered spurts of life, horrified her.

'Who knows what Valcours had in mind,' said Otille, stabbing the dummy with her umbrella. 'Some plot, some game, But I hated the thing! Once, I was about eight, it scared me badly, and after it had stopped moving, I took out the iron compartment and dropped it in the bayou.' She sauntered off along the rim of the pool, scuffing algae off the marble. 'I've ordered the copper,' she said over her shoulder. 'You can stay if you like.'

'How long will it take?' asked Donnell.

'A week to get here, then a few weeks for construction.' She started walking toward the house. 'You can think about it a few more days if you wish, but if you do stay, I hope you understand that it's a job. You'll have to keep yourself available to me five days a week from noon until eight. For my experiments. Otherwise, you're on your own.' She turned and gave Donnell a canny look. 'Are you sure you've told me everything about the veve, why you're building it?'

'I hardly know myself,' he said.

'I wonder how it relates to Les Invisibles,' she said.

'Les Invisibles?'

'The voodoo gods,' said Jocundra. 'They're sometimes called Les Invisibles or the loas.'

'Oh,' he said derisively. 'Voodoo.'

'Don't be so quick to mock it,' said Otille. 'You're about to build the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of three tons of copper. That sounds like voodoo to me.'

'It's quite possible,' said Jocundra, angry at Otille's know-it-all manner, 'that the veve is an analogue to some mechanism in the brain and can therefore be used by mediums as a concentrative device, one which Donnell -because of his abilities - can use in a more material way.'

'Well,' Otille began, but Jocundra talked through her.

'If you're a devotee of voodoo, then you certainly know that it's a very social religion. People bring their day to day problems to the temple, their financial difficulties, lovers' quarrels. It's only reasonable to assume they're receiving some benefit, something more than a placebo of hope, that there are valid psychological and even physiological principles embedded in the rituals.'

'Oh, my,' said Otille, rolling her eyes. 'I'd forgotten we were keeping company with an academic. Let me tell you a story, dear. There was a man in Warner's Parish, a black man, who was on the parish council and who believed in voodoo, and his colleagues put pressure on him to disavow his beliefs publicly. It was an embarrassment to them, and they weren't too happy about having a black on the council in any case. They threatened to block his re-election. Well, the man thought it was important to have a black on the council, and he made the disavowal. But that same night hundreds of men and women came into town all possessed by Papa Legba, who was the man's patron loa. They were all dressed up as Legba, with moss for gray hair, canes, tattered coats and pipes, and they went to the man's house and demanded he give them money. It was a mob of stiff-legged, entranced people, all calling out for money, and finally he gave it to them and they left. He said he'd done it to make them go away, which is true no matter how you interpret the story. The people of the parish put it off to a bunch of crazy backwoods niggers getting excited about nothing, but as a result the man kept his post and satisfied his god. And of course it hasn't happened since. Why should it? The necessary had been accomplished. That's the way Les Invisibles work. Singular, unquantifiable events. Impossible to treat statistically, define with theory.'

Otille smiled at Jocundra, and Jocundra thought of it as the smile of a poisoner, someone who has seen her victim sip.

'Hardly anyone notices,' said Otille.

Behind the house was a group of eight shotgun cabins, each having three rooms laid end to end, and here, said Otille, lived her 'friends.' Slatternly women peered out the windows and ducked away; slovenly men stood on the porches, scratched their bellies and spat. To the west of the cabins was a graveyard centered by a whitewashed crypt decorated with rada paintings - black figures holding bloody hearts, sailing in boats over