"We see things differently, then," she said, and they walked on silently.
The gravel road made a gradual turn, and they saw the hothouse. Michael pointed at the greenness that crowded against its glass sides.
"See," he said. "That's the ivy. Unprepossessing, isn't it?"
Laura nodded. The ivy seemed squat and sullen in the glass house. "I wonder," she said aloud, "if that's the same type of ivy that's supposed to grow on college walls."
"Might be," Michael said. "It has the same arrogantly useless look. I wouldn't be surprised."
He pointed again. "And the wall's right over there. Can you see it?"
"Yes," Laura said. The wall was about as high as her shoulders, and perhaps seventy-five feet long. The gravel road ended in a kind of dusty hollow, and the wall fenced off the open end of the hollow. It was made of reddish-brown bricks, and it had been made with too much mortar. As they approached it they could see the hardened cement bulging and spilling thickly between the individual bricks.
Michael stopped at the wall and turned to her. "Do you know how to jump?"
"I guess so," she said dubiously. "What do you do?"
"Like this," Michael said. He flickered out of sight for an instant and reappeared sitting cross-legged on top of the wall.
"It's like thinking yourself places," he explained, "only it's for such a short distance that you have to be careful not to overshoot. Concentrate on getting the jump just right and forget about being visible for a moment. Be careful. It's tricky the first few times."
Laura made it on the fourth try and sat beside him on the wall. "I'd feel excited and breathless," she said, "if I had any breath to lose. That's the great disadvantage of not having a body. You forget what it's like to rest when you're tired."
"You're never satisfied," Michael said, but he smiled. "Look now. Look over there."
Below the wall the land fell away abruptly to a last field of cheap, chalky headstones. Beyond the field she saw the great fence that ran all around the cemetery, and beyond the fence there was the hard grillwork of the city.
"I never saw this," she said. "I was never here before."
From where they sat on the wall they could see almost all of Yorkchester. The buildings stood up in pinkness, differing from one another only in the number of television aerials that they wore like hairpins. Between them, cars clustered in the streets like bunches of a sour fruit. The flat wind of summer slid across the city, lifting skirts without any real interest, and the people moved slowly in the streets. On the skyline there rose the proudly naked skeleton of what would probably be a housing project. There was movement on it, and Laura was sure she could hear the workmen shouting. A three-lane highway ran parallel to the city, agreeable to keeping it company for a little, but sleekly separate even when the streets of the city ran into it.
Michael saw Laura looking at the highway and said, "There was a river there before the highway. First they thinned it down to a trickle. Then they changed its course three or four times. Finally the damn thing just disappeared. Died of frustration, I think."
She could hear every sound in the city, Laura thought. She heard the car horns, and the curses in the streets, and the children crying in the heat, and the clicking of light switches in the office buildings. She heard the thrumming of the electric fans in the subway trains, and the sounds that different kinds of heels make on different kinds of pavements, and the bouncing of rubber balls against the sides of buildings, and the shrill yells of the workmen on the housing project. She even heard the clear clatter of coins in the money machines of buses.
Beside her, Michael murmured, "And the devil took Faust up on a high place and showed him all the cities of the world."
Laura reluctantly took her eyes off the city before her. "Is that Faust? There's something like it in the Bible, about Christ."
"Both, I think," Michael said. "Faust gave in and Christ didn't, that's all. The devil couldn't meet Christ's price, and so Christ went uncorrupted. There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous."
Laura laughed. "Now you sound a little like that man who was with your wife."
"What man?" Michael asked sharply.
"I don't know his name. I think he's her lawyer."
"Oh," Michael said slowly.
After a moment he said, "Excuse me for snapping at you."
"I didn't notice," Laura said. She looked out at the city again. "Anyway, this isn't exactly all the world. It's only Yorkchester."
"It's all we've got. Hell, it's more than we've got. If the devil offered it to me right now—" He left the sentence unfinished.
"Michael," Laura said suddenly.
"Uh-huh?"
She began to tell him about the statue of the boy she had seen in the morning. She told it carefully, putting in every detail she could remember, including the statue's book and the things the man had said as he stood there. When she came to the parts where she had threatened the boy and told him that nobody would come to see him, she faltered a little and looked away from Michael, but she told him everything that she remembered. He listened quietly, never smiling or interrupting her.
"I don't know why I did it," she finished. "Every time I think about it I get more and more ashamed of myself. I never did that sort of thing while I was alive, Michael, no matter what I felt. Why should I do it now? What did I think I was gaining from it?"
Michael shrugged. "I don't know, Laura. I don't know you well enough. Maybe you just got tired of being sweet and shy. This happens. It's a bastardly role to play. It doesn't matter. You didn't hurt him."
Deliberately and openly he changed the subject by pointing a third time toward Yorkchester. "Do you like it? Are you glad I brought you here?"
"Yes," Laura said quickly, glad for the opportunity to stop talking about the boy. "I love sitting and looking at it. I could sit here all day."
"I have. You should see it at night. Like a birthday cake."
"I love the sounds. Probably because the cemetery's so quiet. I find myself going in search of noises."
"Tell me some," Michael said. "What do you hear?"
"People talking," Laura began, "and traffic, and airplanes overhead—" She stopped and turned to him. "Why do you ask me? Can't you hear them yourself?"
Michael shook his head. "Not a sound. Never, since I died."
"I don't understand," Laura said slowly. "You can hear me, can't you?"
"Loud and clear. I hear whoever I'm talking to, and I hear whatever sounds you can hear in a cemetery. But I can't hear a thing from that damn city."
He smiled wryly at her puzzlement. "All the sounds we hear are sounds we remember. We know how talk and trains and running water should sound, and if we're a little off in remembering, a little sharp or flat, nobody notices. But I just don't remember how Yorkchester sounded, all in all. I didn't pay very much attention, I think."
"I'm sorry—" Laura said awkwardly.
"Never mind being sorry. You and I waste entirely too much effort apologizing to each other. Just tell me some of the sounds you hear. I'll listen."
Laura hesitated. "I don't really know where to begin. There's a pile driver working over by that new building."
"What does it sound like?" When she did not speak, he added, "It's all right. Tell me what it sounds like to you."
"Like a heartbeat," Laura said. "Very heavy and regular. A slow, slamming heartbeat."
"Uh-huh. What about subway trains? Can you tell me about those?"