When the explosion ripped across his consciousness this time, Fanor didn't even flinch. His eyes came open, welcomed by the ceiling fan, a creaking blur in the semi darkness. Fanor turned his head on the sweat soaked pillow and focused on the eastern pink of sunrise creeping across the ceiling. His ragged breathing accompanied the ceiling fan.

It was always the same. The dream played itself out nightly in his awareness that never really rested. Sometimes a night passed, maybe two, when he didn't dream. But the third night came and the dream with it.

‘What have I done?' he whispered to the ceiling fan. Each morning he asked the same question and each morning the only answer was that steady creak. He felt like a man condemned for some unspeakable crime. But no memories came, no matter how he searched within. He simply didn't know who he was or how he had come to this place.

Fanor sat up as he heard the familiar footsteps of the manservant. What was his name? Sanjay! Fanor grasped that datum as he looked into the familiar face.

“Good morning, Doctor.”, Sanjay said cheerily. “You didn't talk so much last night.” He poured steaming water into a large nephrite bowl. Fanor's attention was caught by the

perfection of the bowl: pale green and carved so thin the motion of the water could be seen through its sides.

“Are you hungry, Doctor?” ‘Doctor', Fanor turned the word over in his mind. Sanjay chattered on. “We have your breakfast ready. Take your time, we'll keep it warm.”

We? Fanor asked himself, struggling to remember. Yes! Seeta was here! The young woman was probably Sanjay's sister. He remembered the furtive, almost self-conscious

way she moved as she went about her work. And she never looked directly at Fanor. Ever. Yes, he thought happily, I remember Seeta.

Standing before the nephrite bowl Fanor peered down through the rising steam. The wavering surface of the water ringed by the pale green of the bowl again held him still for a moment. That sight made him feel as if a memory were imminent. Sanjay called me Doctor, he told himself. And apparently I talk in my sleep.

In one quick motion Fanor made to scoop up two handfuls of water and splash it across his sweaty face. The unexpected shock of ice cold water wrenched his eyes open and propelled him back coughing and sputtering.

“Are you alright, Doctor? “Sanjay breathed, rushing in from another room.  Fanor grabbed the towel from Sanjay's hands. He glared at the bowl, at the steam still rising from the water.

“Fine”, Fanor croaked out, trying to compose himself. “I'm fine.”

Breakfast was served outside on brass trays set on three legged stands. Fanor ate hungrily, finding the onion crepes and hyacinth delicious. When he finished he stood and turned a slow circle, wanting to know the limits of his world. He sat outside a villa situated near the top of a low hill. A carpet of grass sloped gently away toward a river bank 80 yards distant. On the opposite bank a village of wood frame longhouses continued the spill downhill toward a line of thick bamboo forest. Fanor noted the pointed prows of the longhouse roofs over the levee that contained the river. The

Villa itself was a sprawling one storied jumble of rooms built around interior courtyards. The outer walls were thick, vine covered and built to maintain the privacy of those within.

“Sanjay!” Fanor felt revulsion at the weakness in his voice. He knew somehow this was not who he had been.

“Yes Doctor.” Sanjay came out of the house drying his hands. Fanor noticed those hands were calloused and strong.

“Sanjay, I…I don't remember.” Sanjay smiled, an open expression full of sympathy and understanding. But there was something else, something in the eyes that didn't match the

smile. Fanor pushed this thought aside.

“Doctor…you have been struggling with this ever since you came to us.” Sanjay's words filled Fanor with a sense of waiting. And dread.

“Came t-to you?”

“To us,” Sanjay repeated, nodding. “Seeta and I take care of you in this house.” Fanor felt the surge of impatience.

“What do you know of me? From before I was…here?” Sanjay looked uncomfortable.

“Only what your ID said, that your name is Dr. Fanor Bana.”

“How long?” Fanor struggled not to shout, “How long have I been here?”

“A year.” Fanor sat down and took a deep breath. A cloud of unruly blackbirds 

flowed along the riverbank, soaring and screeching like a single sinuous organism.

They were a living curtain of black framing Sanjay's deep yellow shalwar kameez.

“A…year,” Fanor breathed. He looked hard at Sanjay. “No one has come for me? No one…?”

“No, Doctor.”

“But…”

“Doctor,” Sanjay began. “You know me, you know Seeta. Sometimes you take the ferry across the river and stroll through the village. The children know you there.” As Sanjay spoke Fanor knew it was true. He remembered the children pouring from the longhouses

when he walked the village. He took them sweets and taught them songs.

“A year ago you couldn't walk,” Sanjay continued. “You couldn't remember our names, though we told you a hundred times each day. Now you know these things. You must not be discouraged. Whatever happened to you is fading. You are healing.”

Somehow Sanjay's words brought a soothing calm to Fanor. His features, so even and regular, seemed almost to represent the ordering of Fanor's limited world. He sighed, reaching for serenity. Then, with a start, he recognized this for a calming ritual from his past.   

“Doctor?” Everything in Sanjay's demeanor said he knew some of Fanor's memory had come trickling back. And the thing behind his eyes Fanor had glimpsed earlier was back.

It turned slowly, as if suspended and coiling in the space between them.

“I…”Fanor blinked, held his breath. It was gone. But for the barest moment it had been there, who he was and the path that led him to this sanctuary.

“It's gone.” Fanor said simply. Sanjay's disappointment could not have been more obvious. His shoulders slumped, his face a study in frustrated impatience.

“Not to worry, Doctor,” Sanjay said, forcing some of his customary cheerfulness. “It will come back to you. All of it.” He turned away but not before Fanor saw the expression on his face.

Fanor went to his room to meditate. He knew instinctively this was his custom of many years. He was a moment staring through the window. The tips of young bamboo shoots tickled his field of vision, instigated by a gentle breeze.

As he sat crossed legged on the floor his foot touched something flat and shiny. It was a large envelope slipped under the edge of the woven carpet. When he opened it Fanor found several sheets of shimmerfilm. He chose one, stroked the upper left corner and watched it expand into a diaphanous hologram. How did I know to do that? He wondered as the images resolved themselves in response to his eye movements.

           Fanor recognized the schematic of a large research complex. He shivered, in spite of the heat. ‘I know this place' he thought. But there was no joy in the recognition. The earlier feeling of creeping guilt came back to form a pool of dread around him. Fanor saw the label ‘Lac Son' and translated aloud. “Mountain of Joy.”    

At that moment Fanor experienced a sensation of powerful acceleration. His eyes rolled up into their sockets and a thousand voices filled his skull. They called his name, screaming, begging, cursing, confessing.

“I will have what you know!” Those words came from him, his voice a bullhorn. He stood in the matrix of an alpha amplifier glaring down at a sea of tortured faces.

“Intendent!” they called. “Intendent, Intendent!”

“Give me what I want!” His own voiced thundered, drowning out those pitiful cries.

It stopped. Suddenly a rushing silence filled the room and Fanor felt oppressed by it. How long had he been here? The orange slanting light of late afternoon nudged him to full alertness. Had he lost an entire day? He tried to straighten his legs and found they barely responded. Panic crashed over him like a wave

“Sanjay!” The loudness of his outcry both surprised and frightened Fanor. “What's happening to me? “SANJAY!”

“Doctor, what is it?” Sanjay hurried in. His strong arms lifted the smaller man to his bed. Fanor winced at the pain and stiffness as he tried to flex his legs.

“What happened, Doctor?” Sanjay's voice was low and insidious, almost a whisper.

“I heard…”Fanor stopped short, drew back to look at Sanjay. He remembered the voices, the pitiful cries for mercy, the green nephrite circle enclosing steaming water.

“What is it Doctor?” Sanjay asked as he busied himself righting the table Fanor had upset. “What did you…?”

“Nothing!” Fanor said, terrified by the forced casualness in Sanjay's voice and manner.

” I…I fell, that's all.”

“I'll bring you some soup, Doctor”, Sanjay continued, not missing a beat. “That always makes you feeling better.”

Fanor clutched the other man's sleeves as he turned to go, hissed through clenched teeth. “Sanjay, please! What's happening to me?” Sanjay stared into Fanor's eyes. He seemed to be looking for something that wasn't there. Yet. He gently pried Fanor's fingers from his sleeve. “Rest Doctor. I'll be right back with the soup.”

Fanor buried his face in his hands when Sanjay had gone. He took deliberate deep breaths to calm his hammering heart. The moment Sanjay had looked into his eyes Fanor realized another weight had been dragging him down. Fear! Each breath was labored with the heavy smoke of danger.  Even so he felt himself sliding toward a deep sleep, demanded by his exhaustion.

When he slept there were voices. Not the pleading that ignited his indignation before. These voices were closer, familiar, real.

“It's too soon!” Sanjay's voice raised in uncharacteristic anger. Fanor felt surprise through the curtain of sleep.

“You are coddling him!” A woman's voice, wielded with equal heat. “I will not watch you become his footman!!

“We have worked too hard to rush this.” Sanjay returned, his effort to control his anger evident.

“No!” The woman rejoined, louder, angrier. “I… have worked too hard, suffered too much, to see you pity him!!” 

Seeta! The realization brought new intensity to Fanor's fear. Please let this be a dream, he pleaded. It was possible! This could all be a dream, like the other images.

“Doctor.” It was Sanjay, gently shaking him awake. When Fanor opened his eyes he instantly smelled the soup.  It infused it's garlic mushroom flavor into the air. He remembered this was his favorite. How did they know?

“You must eat, Doctor.” Sanjay said, setting up a three legged tray near the bed. “We've seen you like this before. The soup always makes you feel better.”

Fanor sat up and submitted to Sanjay spooning the savory broth into him. The liquid warmth spread outward from his belly and he sighed. By the time he had eaten three bowls his anxiety was gone.

“Bless you.” Fanor's own words surprised him and Sanjay was actually speechless. A little more of who he once was came seeping back into Fanor. He drew himself up and looked at Sanjay.

“I will go to the village.”

“Very good, Doctor,” Sanjay said, stacking the bowls and utensils. “We will…”

“No.” Fanor said, his voice sounding as if it were used to being obeyed. “I will go alone, as I have before.”

“Before!” Sanjay's voice a whispered gasp. Fanor knew it too. The memory of previous walks underpinned the conviction in his voice.

“As you wish, Doctor.” Sanjay gave a slight bow. That watchfulness filled his eyes, tugging at his expression. His stare was intense, almost predatory. He inhaled every word Fanor spoke.  

Fanor realized that on some level he wanted to please this man, think of him as an ally in this place. He knew immediately this was contrary to whom he had been.

“Fetch my cane, Sanjay.” Despite the harshness in his voice Sanjay beamed.

“Yes Doctor.” The bowls rattled on the tray as he hurried out.

It was dusk when Fanor arrived in the village. He didn't remember the levee being so steep and picked his way carefully down the slope. The facades of the longhouses stretched before him like a corridor of family portraits. Children chased each other through the gathering dusk. Some of them waived their recognition, but didn't stop their game.

Fanor started down the row of Longhouses, looking up as he passed the elevated entrances .The laughter and arguments of family life wafted out of each longhouse like smoke from the cooking fires that joined in a single plume over Fanor's head.

He came to a clearing just as the moon rose over the black mass of the surrounding jungle. Fanor stared, captivated by the beauty of that bloated milky orb. He was filled with wonder watching the edges of the disk ripple as the forest exhaled its humid night-breath.

“Like Damaris rising.” The voice, vaguely feminine, came out of the night somewhere behind Fanor. He whirled, stared hard into the blackness as the sound of childish laughter

floated to him out of a longhouse. No one there. He looked again at the moon. It wavered in the night vapors, pulsing. Damaris rising, he thought, why does that…?

“Intendent!” The memory rose up around him like the waters of a fetid swamp. The long-

houses, the forest, that moon, all gone. He stood atop an oval dais, staring over the heads of supplicants.  They spread before him in all directions like a living carpet waiting to be trodden.

“Pick me!”

“No me!”

“INTENDENT!”

The voices were like music, rising with the smell of sweat and fear and scalded flesh. When he looked down at them they reached up. Hysterical with fear, all of them. Except for one.

She stood at the center of that screaming, wretched mass and said nothing. She didn't reach out, only looked at him with that opaque expression. She was the only one who did not avert her eyes when he looked in her direction. He was a moment deciding if this were a threat to be stamped out or a spark of interest to be fanned.

“Sir?” Fanor nearly jumped out of his skin at the woman's touch. He was back in the village clearing under a swollen moon. And someone had touched him.

“I'm sorry, Sir.” It was a young woman. “I didn't mean to startle you”, she was saying. “You seemed so…far away. Are you alright, Sir?”

Her face was obscured by a thin cotton veil that would have been diaphanous in the light of day. In this moonlight her face was a shadow under a crag.

“It's alright.” Fanor said deliberately. He trembled on the edge of some kind of epiphany but felt inhibited by this woman's presence.

“Can I get you something, Sir?” she asked.

Without acknowledging her question Fanor started off toward the levee, his cane forgotten and unneeded on the ground. He ached to get back to the sanctuary of the villa.

Lights were switching on in his head and he craved solitude and privacy to assimilate it all.               

“Like Damaris rising.” The words hounded him, caught at his feet as he tried to walk faster. He dared not look up at the moon. Suddenly it was heaven's eye, accusing him of remembering, of knowing the dirty secrets that came rushing from far off inside him.

Then he was at the levee, the lurching walk here forgotten. There were only the flashes going off in his psyche. Damaris rose in his memory, a pale massive beautiful thing that

filled the sky of Elburz, it's only inhabited moon and the seat of Fanor's power.

“Gas Giant.” Fanor mumbled, then looked around self-consciously. Had anyone heard?

He had done something, done something, done something terrible that he mustn't remember, mustn't remember, daren't recall.

“Tell me!” He cried, wrenching himself around to stare up at the moon.

“Crossing Sir?” Fanor jumped again. The ferryman had approached silently, rowing his sampan to the simple dock. Fanor looked at him with eyes that were pools of anguish.

He'll think I'm insane. The thought echoed in his head.

“Crossing Sir?” Fanor entered the low sampan, folding his legs under him. He closed his eyes.

“No!” Fanor jerked, snapped his eyes open. He nearly upset the sampan

“Sir what is it?” The ferryman's concern was tinged with irritation as he worked to steady the boat.

“Just get me to the other side!” Fanor snapped. He breathed deeply, trying to steady his inner trembling. Closing his eyes had transported him again, this time to some sort of bio-mimetic chamber where he was bathed in a radiant orange light. He raged against those who did this to him, writhed as the treatment slowly cooked the life from him. He remembered hearing his own skin sizzle.   

“We're here, Sir.” The ferryman interrupted his passenger's suffering. Fanor fled the sampan, rushing past the ferryman's outstretched hand. At the villas gate he stopped and looked for the moon, instead saw Damaris rising and remembered the heat, the heat, the heat.

“You're back.” Fanor nearly fainted at the voice so near. When he turned to confront this latest intruder he was stopped by the expression on Seeta's beautiful face. She looked at him directly. It was the first time he remembered her meeting his gaze and it fixed him like a spell.

“We were starting to worry.” Her lips barely moved in that otherwise immobile face.

“Where is Sanjay?” Fanor demanded. She stared at him, the picture of composure.

“Waiting.” Her enigmatic answer terrified Fanor and he looked past her at the villa. The smells of cooking came to him and this was somehow comforting.

“Isn't the moon beautiful?” Seeta asked, taking a step toward him. Fanor retreated a single pace. Her eyes bored into his, as if daring him to look away. “So beautiful,” she whispered. “Like Damaris rising.”

“Sir wake up.” Fanor felt a cold cloth on his forehead. He opened his eyes to see Sanjay's face full of concern for him. He lay on his bed, the familiar ceiling fan turning slowly.

“You fainted, Sir.” Sanjay said evenly, then glaring across the room at Seeta, “At the gate.”

“Too much exertion.” Seeta's voice from beyond Fanor's field of vision was flat, emotionless. “In your weakened state you must be careful, Doctor.”

Fanor did not look at her. Instead he watched Sanjay try to control his facial expression.       

“Doctor there is soup.” Sanjay's smile restored to his rightful place, he rose to go fetch.

“I'll bring tea.” Seeta said, following Sanjay out.

As soon as they left Fanor sniffed the soup and swiftly identified the mix of mushroom, garlic, onion and ayahuasca. The hallucinogenic properties of this last ingredient were known to him from the memories that were quickly crystallizing in his mind. There were still gaps, but now he knew the supposed year long convalescence in this place to be a lie.

He calculated it had been 40 or 50 days since he was taken from some sort of transport. Fanor dribbled a bit of the soup on his tunic and poured the rest out the window.

When they returned Seeta entered first. Sanjay came in behind her, a pot of steaming tea on a tray.

“You finished your soup, Doctor.” Seeta's declaration was obviously for Sanjay's benefit. Fanor sighed contentedly, as he had after so many bowls of his ‘favorite soup'.

“I am tired.” He said, drowsy. “I suppose I really did overdo it tonight in the village.” He made to lie down, noting the intense stares of Sanjay and Seeta.

“You should have some tea, Doctor.” Sanjay hurriedly poured tea into one of the porcelain cups. In his haste he spilled the tea. “It will make you sleep.”

“No!” The three of them were surprised by the force of Fanor's objection. “I mean…”

“It's alright Doctor.” Sanjay said, mopping up the tea with the tray linens.” The tea can wait.” He stared hard at Seeta, willing her silent.

“Of course.” Seeta echoed, slamming the soup bowls onto the tray and wrenching it off its tripod.

“Seeta and I have work, Doctor.” Sanjay said, still staring at Seeta. “Now.”

Fanor listened carefully for their retreating footfalls. He knew this may be his only chance and bolted off the bed. He stood in the center of the room and listened as he had never listened before.  He closed his eyes and dropped his jaw to improve his hearing. The front gate slammed. Then silence. Where is Seeta? He wondered, convinced she presented the greater danger.

He slipped his feet into his sandals and packed his bedclothes into a roll. He didn't know when or where he would sleep next. He only knew he had to get out of this place. Danger radiated from every corner of this room that had once been a refuge.

His steps were silent as he stole along a flagstone path skirting the manicured yard.   

He would make the levee and use it as his highway out of here. Any direction would do.

The grass was dew covered and seemed to grab at Fanor's ankles as he walked. He climbed the levee shivering as he went. He felt exposed and the sense of danger was so strong he moaned unconsciously with fear.

“Where is Seeta?” he breathed.

“Here!”

It was as if an electric charge flashed through him before he realized it. Fanor jerked to the right, wrenched around against his will. Seeta stood in the ferryman's boat staring up at him.

“I curse your clan.” Her words pounded Fanor like an angry sea. Her voice was low, venom filled. “I curse your seed and all who carry it.” Fanor staggered back, blinded by the sound of a mirror shattering in his memory.

“I condemn you to the fate of all who oppose me.” Seeta's voice was a dark chant as she slowly climbed the levee toward a paralyzed Fanor. “Your feet stumble as I approach, your muscles will not obey you.”

She was face to face with him now, staring into his eyes as his lips began to move in unison with hers, repeating the long buried words.    

“Your will melts as I judge you.” They spoke together. Fanor looked at the stars, marked the white lines they drew across night as they spun. Or was it he who spun?

“You have no power, no future, no family, no breath.” Seeta was yelling the words now, drowning out the pitiful sound Fanor's voice had become. But he was powerless to stop, to flee.

“I curse our clan,” they recited together. “I curse your seed and all who carry it.” Seeta lifted her chin as they finished. There was triumph in her eyes, a glee that spoke of frustrated waiting now over.

“Now,” she whispered. “Damaris is risen. There is no turning back.” At her words Fanor's head jerked in an uncontrollable spasm. Slurred music filled his eyes and he was deafened by the color red. He remembered. All of it. His name, his family, his tenure on Elburz as Supreme Intendent of Science. That position had given him power to use human flesh and DNA as raw material for his experiments.

No Intendent before him dared what Fanor did. He had composed the curse Seeta forced him to remember, used it to control slaves ignorant of the precious DNA they carried. Raw material Fanor coveted.  

Those in power were the first to benefit from his ‘work'. Their extended life spans, twice the 120 standard years any citizen of the Cooperative could expect, were ample payment for their silence. Until the day came when Fanor's crimes became public knowledge. When those with the most to lose could no longer shield him, they turned on him.     

The trial was broadcast live through the twelve systems of the Cooperative, proof the machine of government was “hard at work to protect you, the citizen.”

Fanor sat silent through the trial, musing on the various ways they might choose to execute him. The press remarked on his composure, marveled at his stoicism. He laughed at them silently, careful to maintain his mask, even with his attorney. A nervous, birdlike thing, she was nonetheless quite competent. She hadn't blinked when, in one of their client-attorney meetings, he said “Of course I did it, you stupid girl.”

 “I am your attorney,” she'd said without changing expression, “Nothing said here will leave this…”

“Spare me “the speech”, child!” He had exploded with impatience. “They will kill me because it is all they can do.”

“Nevertheless I must try.”

And try she did. Quite skillfully, much to Fanor's grudging surpriset. The one occurrence that caused him any real concern was the appearance of his former Chief Assistant as a defense witness. Fanor remembered sitting bolt upright when she walked past him toward the witness booth.

“State your name for the record.” The mechanical bailiff ordered. She looked at Fanor with an expression he could not describe. Then she turned to the audio pickup and spoke in that clear voice of hers .

“Seeta.”

Now Fanor stood facing this woman and remembered it all in a debilitating rush. He remembered his bolt hole plan, held as precious secret that would give him victory over his tormentors. It was that secret plan that sustained him through the trial, gave him the strength to stare unflinching at the pompous minister who had taken such pleasure in pronouncing the all too predictable verdict.

“You will be taken to Dur Ang Reeducation Center and subjected to the Flower Bath.” Fanor remembered staring at the man, hating him, hating the euphemisms. The Reeducation Center was a forsaken gulag on the edge of a blistering pea-gravel desert. The “Flower Bath” was well known to Fanor. He had used it to eliminate many tiresome enemies over the years. The subject was ‘bathed' in a radiant carellium spectrum, destroying the body's molecular cohesion and all memory of the event.

Fanor sat calmly as they strapped him into the softness of the execution divan, clinging to his secret, using it to combat the terror welling up within him. When the ‘bath' swept over him the sheer force of his agony knocked the breath out of him. He experienced his body's writhing as a padded, distant sensation. I'm dying, he thought, panic racing with shock to overwhelm him. It's not supposed to be fatal, he reminded himself.

He clung to what he knew of the process. Painful as it penetrated the flesh to plant a slow molecular death in his cells. The administration of ‘the bath' was the definition of agony. But not fatal, he told himself, not fatal.

No, the treatment itself didn't kill you. It was the slow release of the molecular bonds that allowed one to exist as a corporeal being. Fanor had watched the Flower bath do it's insidious work on his enemies. One day the victim's hand passed through a table, convincing them of a decent into madness. With no memory of the treatment itself the mental agony amplified the horror of no longer being able to eat or feel the sun on your face. Then one day, after weeks of madness, you simply spread upon the odd breeze, little by little, until you were gone.

Fanor thought of all this while the carellium spectrum cooked his flesh. Seeta, he had thought, Seeta stay close. I need you. Finally, mercifully, he blacked out. He had awakened in his room at the villa, Sanjay attending him. All of this swirled through Fanor and he staggered back a pace with Seeta stared him down. She was less than an arms length away.

“Seeta”, he managed, facing her now under a frigid moon, “I …remember. I remember, all of it.” Seeta slapped him so hard and unexpectedly his ears rang.

“All of it?” she hissed, advancing on him again.

“Seeta, what…?” She slapped him again, harder.

“ALL OF IT?” Her scream was more painful than the blows, so filled with hatred.  She stood quivering, her fists clenched at her sides. “Your plan, Fanor,” He clearly heard the venom and fear returned. “Your precious plan. Did you think I didn't know?!!”

“Know?” Fanor's eyes narrowed. She could not possibly have known! Not possibly!

“Yesssss” Seeta hissed,  an exaggerated sound. “I knew.”

“Seeta…” He heard the sound of a blade sliding out of its sheath.

“Don't even open your mouth!” She spat, bringing the blade up so he could see it in the moonlight. It was as long as Seeta's forearm, the hungry serrated edges catching the milky light around them.

“Your final escape.” She said, stepping around him as she spoke. Fanor kept his eyes on the blade. “The ego-presence distilled to a specific biochemical formula and injected into a host.Quite an achievement, Fanor.”

”Seeta, don't…”He screamed as she slashed through the sleeve on his left arm and opened the flesh from shoulder to elbow. He staggered back, sickened by the sight of his own blood.

“The serum travels to the brain,” she continued, “where it imprints the invading ego on the neurons of the cerebral cortex.” Her tone was flat, clinical.

“Seeta! I was going to…” Another scream as the blade arced across his chest, drawing a line of blood, black in the moonlight, from collar bone to armpit.

“Much the way a maggot eats its way out of a living host.” Seeta was saying, facing him again. She held the blade straight out, the tip resting against Fanor's windpipe. His eyes, pools of mortal fear, were the only part of his body the trembling didn't affect.    

“I wonder...” Seeta mused, “Would you have felt anything when you injected me? Don't deny it! I know, Fanor. I know I was to be your host.”

“SEETA!!” Her eyes shifted toward that voice and the blade wandered from Fanor's throat. Sanjay was already halfway up the levee and moving fast. How had she missed his approach?

Fanor knew he wouldn't get another chance and lunged for Seeta. She saw the change in Sanjay's expression and the blade flashed up just as Fanor's full weight came at her.     

The three of them experienced a moment of unprecedented shock as Fanor passed through Seeta's blade, through Seeta herself and floated down the sloping levee like a wraith in the moonlight. 

Seeta loosed a shrill cry of triumph that made Sanjay shiver. She held the blade up like a trophy and threw her head back. Her laughter was sharp, maniacal, cathartic.

“Help me!” Fanor floated just off the ground, thick shafts of moonlight passing through him as if he were a pane of glass.

“Help me! Seeta mocked. She threw the blade through his wavering form and when it

passed through him as easily as the moonlight, she collapsed into new fits of laughter.

“Not like this,” Fanor was moaning, staring through his transparent hands, “not like this.”

“Yes, like this!” Seeta crowed. “Just like this, just as you would have done to me. To poor, stupid, loyal Seeta.”   

“Seeta!” Sanjay grabbed her arm. “This is not what we planned. Not in the open like this.”

“He killed in the open!” She screamed, wrenching away from Sanjay. ” It is only fitting that he dies in the open.” She walked down the slope of the levee, came close to the thinning wisps that were Fanor.

“I curse your clan.” She whispered. “I curse your seed and all who carry it.”

Fanor found it difficult to hear Seeta. Her voice competed with the visions from his past. Every vestige of control had melted away. The soup fed to him several times a week had

been filled with carellium particles. Their low level radiation dammed up the cumulative affect of the Flower Bath. Until now.

When Fanor finally faded, spread upon the gentle breeze off the river, there was a residue on the grassy levee. Sanjay and Seeta stooped to peer close. In the daylight the residue would have appeared red. Tonight the milk of the bloated moon cast its own spell and what was left of Fanor showed dark on the grass. Like Pomegranate blood.