SPIN

Jase was in remission, or as close as he came to remission these days. With a little effort he could pass for normal. What surprised me was that he stopped making the effort as soon as we arrived at the Big House. He careened through the entrance hall to the dining room. No servants were present— Carol had arranged for us to have the house to ourselves for a couple of weeks—but the cook had left a platter of cold meats and vegetables in case we arrived hungry. Jason slumped into a chair.

Carol and I joined him. Carol had aged visibly since my mother's death. Her hair was so fine now that the contours of her skull showed through it, pink and simian, and when I took her arm it felt like kindling under silk. Her cheeks were sunken. Her eyes had the brittle, nervous alacrity of a drinker at least temporarily on the wagon. When I said it was good to see her she smiled ruefully: "Thank you, Tyler. I know how awful I look. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Not quite ready for my close-up, thank you very effing much." I didn't know what she was talking about. "But I endure. How is Jason?"

"Same as always," I said.

"You're sweet for prevaricating. But I know—well, I won't say I know all about it. But I know he's ill. He told me that much. And I know he's expecting you to treat him for it. Some unorthodox but effective treatment." She took her arm away and looked into my eyes. "It is effective, isn't it, this medication you propose to give him?"

I was too startled to say anything but, "Yes."

"Because he made me promise not to ask questions. I suppose that's all right. Jason trusts you. Therefore I trust you. Even though when I look at you I can't help seeing the child who lives in the house across the lawn. But I see a child when I look at Jason, too. Vanished children—I can't think where I lost them."

* * * * *

That night I slept in a guest room at the Big House, a room I had only glimpsed from the hallway during the years I lived on the property.

I slept some of the night, anyway. Some of it I spent lying awake, trying to gauge the legal risk I had assumed by coming here. I didn't know exactly which laws or protocols Jase might have violated by smuggling prepared Martian pharmaceuticals off the Perihelion campus, but I had already made myself an accessory to the act.

Come the next morning Jason wondered where we ought to store the several vials of clear liquid Wun had passed on to him—enough to treat four or five people. ("In case we drop a suitcase," he had explained at the begi

"Are you expecting a search?"

I pictured federal functionaries in biohazard suits swarming up the steps of the Big House.

"Of course not. But it's never a bad idea to hedge a risk." He gave me a closer look, though his eyes jerked to the left every few seconds, another symptom of his disease. "Feeling a little apprehensive?"

I said we could conceal the spares in the house across the lawn, unless they needed refrigeration.

"According to Wun they're chemically stable under any condition short of thermonuclear warfare. But a warrant for the Big House would cover the entire property."

"I don't know about warrants. I do know where the hiding places are."

"Show me," Jason said.

So we trooped across the lawn, Jason following a little unsteadily behind me. It was early afternoon, election day, but in the grassy space between the two houses it might have been any autumn, any year. Somewhere off in the wooded patch straddling the creek a bird a

The house had been periodically cleaned and dusted but essentially closed since my mother's death. I hadn't been back to organize her effects, no other family existed, and Carol had preferred to maintain the building rather than change it. But it wasn't timeless. Far from it. Time had nested here. Time had made itself at home. The front room smelled of enclosure, of the essences that seep out of undisturbed upholstery, yellow paper, settled fabric. In winter, Carol told me later, the house was kept just warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing; in summer the curtains were drawn against the heat. It was cool today, inside and out.

Jason came across the threshold trembling. His gait had been ragged all morning, which was why he had let me carry the pharmaceuticals (apart from what I had already set aside for his treatment), a half pound or so of glass and biochemicals in a foam-padded leather overnight bag.

"This is the first time I've been here," he said shyly, "since before she died. Is it stupid to say I miss her?"

"No, not stupid."

"She was the first person I ever noticed being kind to me. All the kindness in the Big House came in the door with Belinda Dupree."

I led him through the kitchen to the half-size door that opened into the basement. The small house on the Lawton property had been designed to resemble a New England cottage, or someone's notion of one, down to the rude concrete-slab cellar with a ceiling low enough that Jason had to stoop to follow me. The space was just big enough to contain a furnace, water heater, washing machine and dryer. The air was even colder here and it had a moist, mineral scent.

I crouched into the nook behind the sheet-metal body of the furnace, one of those dusty cul-de-sacs even professional cleaners habitually ignore. I explained to Jase that there was a cracked slab of drywall here, and with a little dexterity you could pry it out to reveal the small uninsulated gap between the pine studs and the foundation wall.

"Interesting," Jason said from where he stood a yard behind me and around the angle of the quiescent furnace. "What did you keep in there, Tyler? Back issues of Gent?"

When I was ten I had kept certain toys here, not because I was afraid anyone would steal them but because it was fun knowing they were hidden and that only I could find them. Later on I stashed less i

"Should have brought a flashlight," Jase said. The single overhead bulb cast negligible light into this cobwebbed coiner.

"There used to be one on the table by the fuse box." There still was. I backed out of the gap long enough to take it from Jason's hand. It emitted the watery, pale glow of a dying battery pack, but it worked well enough that I could find the loose chunk of drywall without groping. I lifted it away and slid the overnight bag into the space behind it, then fitted the drywall in place and brushed chalky dust over the visible seams.

But before I could back out I dropped the flashlight and it rolled even farther into the spidery shadows behind the furnace. I grimaced and reached for it, following the flickery glow. Touched the barrel of it. Touched something else. Something hollow but substantial. A box.

I pulled it closer.

"You almost finished in there, Ty?"

"One second," I said.

I trained the light on the box. It was a shoe box. A shoe box with a dusty New Balance logo printed on it and a different legend written over that in fat black ink: mementos (school).

It was the box missing from my mother's etagere upstairs, the one I hadn't been able to find after her funeral.

"Having trouble?" Jason asked.

"No," I said.

I could investigate later. I pushed the box back where I'd found it and crawled out of the dusty space. Stood up and brushed my hands. "I guess we're done here."

"Remember this for me," Jason said. "In case I forget."