LITMIR.BIZ

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. . . moving . . .” His whisper was barely audible. “Can’t lose . . . a single operative now . . . too dangerous. Tell him . . . FrostNight . . . comes. . . .”

      “I will, I promise,” I said. But his eyes had closed. He was unconscious.

      It didn’t matter. A promise was binding, whether Jay heard me make it or not. I had heard me make it, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life trying to justify to myself why I hadn’t done the right thing.

      I lowered his body and rocked back on my heels, feeling a sudden lump in my throat. I’m not sure how long I stood there, just breathing.

      Then I looked down at the figures he had drawn in the sand.

      It had to be important. But when I looked closely at the characters, they made no sense. It seemed to be some kind of mathematical equation:

      {IW}:=Ω/∞

      I didn’t understand what it meant, but the symbols seemed to take root in my brain, glowing in my mind’s eye.

      It was quiet in that rocky place. I could hear Jay’s gasping breaths and the hiss of the windblown sand and nothing else. I didn’t know how long it had been that way, but I knew that unequal battle between the dinomonster and the little mudluff could have ended only one way. I felt sorry for the little soap bubble thing: first bait in a trap, then killed trying to save Jay and me from a monster.

      I stood, turned and looked back. There was no sign of either critter. I took a few cautious steps forward, trying to get a better view.

      Nothing but settling dust . . .

      Jay’s skin was changing color, taking on a bluish tint. There must have been venom on that creature’s teeth, like he’d said. And if I’d listened to him, and not been stupid, he would never have put himself into the jaws of death, trying to get me out of them. I’d rushed in where angels probably really did fear to tread—and Jay was dying because of that. Because of me. It was my fault. There was no one else to blame.

      I looked up at the sky, and I made another promise, to anything that was out there, anyone who was listening, that if Jay lived, if he pulled through this, if I got him medical attention and he was fine, then I’d be the best, hardest-working, nicest, coolest person anyone could ever be. I’d be St. Francis of Assisi and Gautama Buddha and everyone else like that.

      But his eyes were closed, and he was not breathing, or moving, now, and it didn’t matter what I promised or how good I was going to be in the future or anything.

      Nothing mattered.

      He was dead.

      I COULDN’T LEAVE HIM there.

      You’re going to laugh at me, but I couldn’t. It might have been the sensible thing to do—maybe if I could have dug a grave or something, I would have felt okay about leaving Jay in the desert at the borders of the edge of the In-Between. But the ground was baked, hard red mud with a thin layer of sand over it.

      So I tried to pull him. He didn’t budge. I knew that he outweighed me, but even so, I’d helped him drag himself away from the chasm’s edge not ten minutes ago—and probably used up every ounce of adrenaline in my system doing it, I now realized. Now that the danger was over, I had about as much chance of moving him as I had of raising the Titanic with my teeth.

      I wondered if it was the metal suit that weighed him down so. I examined it, looking for a catch or a zipper or something.

      Nothing.

      There was a hushing noise beside me and I turned. It was the little In-Betweener. The mudluff creature was hovering in the air beside me, floating in space like an amoeba the size of a cat, glittering with all the colors of a rainbow.

      “Hey,” I said. “Well, at least you’re okay. But Jay’s dead. Maybe I ought to have left you there with that tyrannosaurus thing after all.”

      The soap bubble color changed to a rather miserable shade of purple.

      “I didn’t mean it,” I said. “But he was . . . my friend. He was me, kind of. And now he’s dead, and I can’t even get him back to his home. He’s too heavy.”

      The purple color warmed up until the thing glowed a gentle shade of gold. It extended something that wasn’t quite a limb and wasn’t really a tentacle—a pseudopod, I suppose, if that means what I think it does—and it touched the metal suit just above the heart.

      “Yes,” I said. “He’s dead.”

      It pulsed gold—a sort of frustrated gold—and tapped exactly the same place on the suit.

      “You want me to touch it there?”

      It changed color once more, to a serene blue, a pleased sort of blue. I put my finger where the pseudopod had been, and the suit opened to me like a flower to the sun. Jay had been wearing gray boxer shorts and a green T-shirt underneath it. His body seemed so pale. I dragged the suit out from underneath him.

      It weighed a ton. Well, maybe a hundred pounds. The amoeba was still hanging around, as if it were trying to tell me something. It extended a scarlet-tipped pseudopod toward the silver mass of the suit, which lay crumpled on the red earth. Then it pointed at me, and twinkling silver veins appeared across its balloon body.

      “What?” I asked, frustrated. “I wish you could talk.”

      It pointed at the silver suit, now faded to a dull, battleship gray, and then back at me once more.

      “You think I should put it on?”

      It glowed blue, the same shade of blue it had gone before. Yes. I should put it on. “I’ve heard of speaking in tongues,” I said. “I’ve never heard of speaking in colors.”

      Then I picked up the suit—now something like a starfish-shaped overcoat—and draped it over me. It hung there heavily and made my back hurt. It felt like a lead-lined blanket. It was cold and dead. There was no way I could walk more than a dozen steps in any direction wearing this.

      “Now what?” I asked the amoeba. It turned a puzzled shade of green, and yellows and crimsons chased across its surface in rapid succession. Then it pointed, hesitantly, to a spot on the middle of the suit, over my chest. I touched it.

      Nothing happened.

      I touched it again. I banged it. I rubbed it. I squeezed it between finger and thumb as tightly as I could—and suddenly the lead blanket that was covering me came to life. It flowed and oozed and ran over my body, covering me from legs to head. My vision went dark when it flowed across my face. I felt a moment of pure, suffocating panic— and then I could see once more, better than before, and breathe as well.

      Looking down at my body, I could see the silver covering, but I could also see inside it. It was a little like the heads-up displays fighter pilots use in their cockpits. I could see the golden bottle and what looked like a gun of sorts and several objects I didn’t recognize. They seemed to be in pockets of some kind. And I could see my own body.

      I was warm now, except my left shoulder, where the suit had been damaged by Lady Indigo’s spell, and the places where it had been punctured.

      Seen through the mirror mask, the amoeba thing looked even stranger. It was like looking at something huge through binoculars held the wrong way. It was only the size of a cat—I knew that. But somehow I could not shake the idea that it was truly the size of a skyscraper, only it was ten miles away. Does that make any sense?

      “Do you have a name?” I asked it.

      It glowed a hundred colors. I took that as a yes. Trouble is, I don’t speak colors. “I’m going to call you Hue,” I told him. “It’s a joke. Not a funny one, the other kind.” It glowed gold, which I took as it not minding.

      I

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