So they set out, Sylviana forgetting that this unraveled the last of her plans, and that Kalus would no longer be close at hand. For better or worse. * Kalus remained, still as the stone on which he sat. He had moved some time before to the more level ground before the Obelisk, though the grotesque figures carved upon it kept him from coming too close. The peyote had begun to work on him, but its effect was entirely different than what he had hoped. Instead of giving him peace and a quiet understanding, it filled him with a dread that was almost physical. All his thoughts, worded and otherwise, seemed to crash in upon themselves like the breaking of a wave, crushing and smothering every positive impulse, every hopeful thought within him. He was back in the hopeless world of his past, from which she had helped him to escape. But there was no escape. No matter how he turned it around, no matter what contingencies he tried to make and force himself to swallow, the bitter truth remained. Without his woman he had nothing: no love, no purpose, no home. No way to go on, and no reason to try. The ancient sense of fatalism and betrayal returned to him, with still greater intensity, because for a time he had been free. And the brief interval of spoken words and close female companionship evaporated, could no longer protect him from the silent, brutal worlds he had known. Again he saw before him the long chain of savagery and violence, of endless pain and pointless perseverance. All leading to this. To be broken and alone, as only the last of a species is alone. He too felt the razor, though dully. And his one regret in those darkened moments was that he had been so skilled in eluding it. * 'Forty-second street,' said William, continuing in the manner of a tour through Hell. They stood at the base of a long, flat stretch, like a sunken airport runway before them, the grassy dikes to either side still suggestive of the tombs, the mass graves they barely covered. 'You see before you a busy street---strip joints, adult book stores, pornographic theaters. But you don't seem to notice the background much. No. It's the ragged flowers springing from the sidewalk that catch and hold your eye: prostitutes, the whipping girls of the city. 'On a good day all they're required to do is give their bodies to pawing, drooling idiots, who in their half-assed passion call them ‘mother', ‘cheap whore', or the name of some long-lost lover. Oh, but of course they don't really FEEL anything. They're not real people, like you and I.' At this he curled his lip, barely able to contain his rage. 'On bad days..... They're harassed and preyed upon by police, jaded social workers and psychotic killers, or just beaten and abused by the ‘fatherly' pimps.