I'll fix breakfast for her, he decided. Stealthily, he got up from the waterbed and made his way into the kitchen.

A figure stood there waiting for him. A familiar figure.

"Emmanuel," Herb Asher said.

The boy shone in a ghostly way, and Herb Asher realized that he could see the wall and the counter and cabinets behind the boy. This was an epiphany of the divine; Emmanuel was in fact somewhere else. And yet he was here; here and aware of Herb Asher.

"You found her," Emmanuel said.

"Yes," Herb Asher said.

"She will keep you safe."

"I know," he said. "For the first time in my life."

"Now you need not ever withdraw again," Emmanuel said, "as you did in your dome. You withdrew because you were afraid. Now you have nothing to fear. . . because of her pres- ence. She as she is now, Herbert-real and alive, not an image.'

"I understand," he said.

"There is a difference. Put her on your radio station; help her, help your protectress."

"A paradox," Herb Asher said.

"But true. You can do a lot for her. You were right when you thought of the word mutuality. She saved your life last night." Emmanuel lifted his hand. "She was given to you by me."

"I see," he said. He had assumed that was the case.

Emmanuel said, "Sometimes in the equation that the strong protect the weak there is the difficulty in determining who is strong and who is weak. In most ways she is stronger than you, but you can protect her in certain specific ways; you can shelter her back. That is the real law of life: mutual protection. In the final analysis everything is both strong and weak, even the yetzer ha-toy-your yetzer ha-toy. She is a power and she is a person; it is a mystery. You will have time, in the life ahead for you, to fathom that mystery, a little. You will know her better and better. But she knows you now completely; just as Zina has absolute knowledge of me, Linda Fox has absolute knowledge of you. Did you realize that? That the Fox has known you totally, for a very long time?"