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they never used to come down into the sewer, either. Maybe it's because food is getting scarce. These goddamn parasites can't live on dead bodies."
    Jo was busily stuffing things into her backpack. She rolled the rest up in a blanket. Peering over the ledge, at the bodies floating in the water, she said, "Do we dare to go down there now? Won't they infect us?"
    "We're safer in the water. The virus, or whatever it is, is more likely to infect us if we stay up here. In the water, the colloid form will dissolve as soon as it gets out of the body."
    Alex hopped over the side. A moment later, Jo splashed down after him. With his gun barrel, he pushed the bodies out of the way and started moving out.
    As soon as they were far enough away to talk, Jo said, "I just thought of something."
    "What?"
    "They followed us back, didn't they? They followed us, and listened to us making love, and waited until they thought we were asleep. And they did it all without making a sound."
    "Yeah, that's how it looks."
    "But how could they do that?"
    "They must communicate in some way we don't know . . . maybe telepathy."
    "But how could some virus, even if it was created for germ warfare, make people telepathic?"
    "I don't know, but it would explain why we hear colloids screaming when we burn them. I always wondered how they could do it without any vocal apparatus."
    "You mean that we hear it in our minds?"
    "Got a better explanation?"
    "No . . . but what kind of a virus could do that?"
    "We don't know if it is a virus. It's something like one, that's all we know."
    "Where could it have come from?"
    "What difference does it make? It's here now, even if it came from halfway across the galaxy."
     

CHAPTER SIX
    Where would they go? That was what they discussed now, as they moved through the night. If the colloids no longer feared dissolving in water—and why should they, while there were hosts to carry them?—the sewer wasn't safe anymore. Where else in the city could humans hide?
    "The only place where we've got a chance is the park," Alex said as they came up the steps of the Broad Street Subway. There was a waning moon, just past full, that lit their way.
    "You mean Fairmount Park?"
    "Yeah, it stretches for miles, and it's completely overgrown. We might be able to survive there for a while."
    "You don't think the colloids will look for us there?"
    "Even if they do, we'll have a lot of room to elude them."
    Jo shrugged. "What have we got to lose?"
    They had a hike of a mile or more, before they reached Fairmount Park. They stuck to alleys and narrow, back streets as much as they could, which more than doubled the time it took to reach their destination. Twice they saw the glistening hump of a colloid, one sliding down a brick wall, the other pulsating in a doorway. They managed to get by both of them without being sensed. They didn't stop until they were knee deep in weeds, the statues of the park rising ominously in the shadows. This had been a dangerous place even when the city was still alive, a place known for rapists and muggers, a far cry from the intent of its designers in the nineteeth century, who had envisioned a sylvan paradise in the heart of the city. The demise of mankind had left the park a little cleaner, at least; there was no fresh graffiti on the monuments. In the end, Alex thought grimly, the planet might be better off under the rule of the colloids. He decided not to think about it. This was no time to fall into a depressed state.
    "I used to jog here," Jo said, her voice sad and distant. "Over there by Boathouse Row."
    Alex turned in the direction she faced, and saw the shards of the old boathouses rising up from the river like decaying teeth. It somehow was not nostalgic to remember the rowers in their sculls, who had been a familiar sight in the old days. It hurt to think about the world the way it used to be.
    "We've got to go further in, away from the river," he said.
    Jo nodded, and they moved on. There were many