If in the habit of speaking aloud in loneliness, he supposed he could have said reasonably to the imagined presence of Callista beyond the bright amber of the brandy: _Not now, not while your life is proposed for burning, Callista. But afterward, maybe. Afterward. Possibly a letter to the New Essex Bar Association, explaining how for me the law has been an interlude of a quarter-century, and interesting, but now I would rather attempt something that I find more important. Which would annoy the holy hell out of them, Callista, but all the same I may write it._ A curious thought which he took to bed; sleeping quite soon, to encounter the inner voices of sleep, with moments of tranquillity. III She saw it behind her eyelids, a small cloud but deep, suddenly come, suddenly gone. The light strengthened; there was the rock, and a whiteness in the water. _How could you know, Callista, that she was dead?_ She had, as usual, dared to move her cot nearer the wall with the barred door and the graffiti, so that if she crouched at that end of the cot a triangle of shadow protected her from the glare of the naked bulb in the corridor. Matron Kowalski on night duty had a habit of turning that light off and on at chancy intervals after midnight. Regulations probably said it should burn steadily, but Kowalski was a zealous screw when not deep in a comic book, and doubtless hoped to catch her charges in bottomless wickedness by playing cute with the switch. Short-sighted as well as thick-witted, Kowalski had apparently never caught on to Callista's crime of moving the cot. Callista generally tried to retrieve the sin before Matron Flannery came on in the morning, though whenever she forgot, Flannery just looked sad and grumbled: "Now dearie, we gotta put that back where it belongs or it's my arse." And sometimes even shoved it back herself with a heave of a massive thigh. Interesting but maybe unprofitable, to contrast that kindness with the satisfaction Flannery had shown a week ago in disciplining a shouting and clawing wench who didn't want to go downstairs. Flannery had caught the girl from behind with an arm like a side of beef, in the pattern of rape, a stiff block of finger jabbing at nerve clusters here and there, leaving no mark. And if Callista Blake the Weird Woman, Cold Callie the Monkshood Girl, were to create a disturbance, Flannery would be ready, would spread her flat feet and grunt in the same way, like a boar in rut, in the interest of law and order.