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the train bearing the Babooshka and Mikal Margolis pulled over the horizon and stopped to take a look. Rajandra Das's charm over machines was powerful, but surely not that powerful. Nevertheless, he had charmed the Babooshka and her son into being, and now Dr. Alimantando had to decide what to do with them. He offered them refuge in one of the warm dry caves that riddled the bluffs until such time as they chose to leave or had a more permanent residence constructed. Stiff with indignation, the Babooshka refused the offer of sanctuary. She would not sleep in a dirty cave with bat droppings on the floor and lizards for company; no, nor would she share it with a son who was a faithless wastrel and did not know how to treat an old lady who was his poor dear mother. Dr. Alimantando listened with what little grace he could muster and then prevailed upon the Mandellas, whose house was built with family in mind, to take in the waif. Mikal Margolis took the cave. There were bat droppings and there were lizards, but there was no mother so it was not that bad.
     
    In the Mandella household the Babooshka found a contemporary in Grandfather Haran, who entertained her with peapod wine and honeytongued flatteries and asked his son to build an extra room onto the already rambling Mandella home especially for the Babooshka. Every night they would sip wine, reminisce on the days when both they and the world were young, and play the word games the Babooshka loved so much. On one such night, in early autumn, as Grandfather Haran was putting the word "bauxite" down on a double-word triple-letter, the Babooshka noticed for the first time his distinguished grey hair and fine upright body, chipped by time like a china god, but strong and uneroded. She let her eyes rest upon the ironstiff beard and the lovely little shiny button-eyes, and she let out a quiet sigh and fell in love with him.
    "Haran Mandella, as we say in Old New Cosmobad, you are much much gentleman," she said.
    "Anastasia Tyurischeva Margolis, as we say in Desolation Road, you are much much lady," said Grandfather Haran.
    The wedding was set for the following spring.
    Mikal Margolis dreamed in his cave of the mineral springs of Paradise Valley. He would never find his fortune lying around in the rocks of Desola tion Road, but he did find crystals of sulphate of dilemma. With time it refined into a pure form: to find his fortune he must leave Desolation Road and his mother; to leave her would mean leaving on his own and he did not have the courage for that. Such was the essence of Mikal Margolis's purified dilemma. The resolution of it into useful compounds, and his quest for personal anti-maternal courage was to lead him through adultery, murder and exile to the destruction of Desolation Road. But not yet.
     

    ne afternoon, shortly after the official end of the siesta, while people were still unofficially blinking, stretching and yawning out of sweaty sleep, a noise was heard in Desolation Road like none that had ever been heard before.
    "Sounds like a big bee," said the Babooshka.
    "Or a swarm of bees," said Grandfather Haran.
    "Or a big swarm of big bees," said Rajandra Das.
    "Killer bees?" asked Eva Mandella.
    "No such things," said Rael Mandella.
    The twins made gurgling sounds. They were toddling now, at the age of perpetually falling forwards. No door in town could be closed to them, they were intrepid, fearless adventurers. Killer bees would not have fazed them.
    "More like an aircraft engine," said Mikal Margolis.
    "Single engine?" ventured Dr. Alimantando. "Single engine, one seater cropsprayer?" Such things had been a familiar sight in Deuteronomy.
    "More like twin engine," said Mr. Jericho, straining his tuned hearing.
    "Twin-engined, two seats, but not a cropsprayer, a stunter, Yamaguchi and Jones, with two Maybach/Wurtel engines in pull-push configuration, if I'm not mistaken."
    Whatever its source, the noise grew louder and louder. Then Mr. Jericho spied a fleck of