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street Louise was pleased with herself, triumphant; she walked slightly ahead of him as if determined to keep the lead. The ice fog surrounded them, deadened their voices, it was crystallizing like a growth of spruce needles on the telephone wires and the branches of the few trees which he could not help thinking of as stunted, though to the natives, he supposed, they must represent the normal size for trees. He took care not to breathe too deeply. A flock of grosbeaks whirred and shrilled up ahead, picking the last few red berries from a mountain ash.
    “I’m glad it isn’t sunny,” Louise said. “The sun was burning out the cells in my brain, but I feel a lot better now.”
    Morrison glanced at the sky. The sun was up there somewhere, marked by a pale spot in the otherwise evenly spread grey. Hechecked an impulse to shield his eyes and thereby protect his brain cells: he realized it was an attempt to suppress the undesired knowledge that Louise was disturbed or, out with it, she was crazy.
    “Living here isn’t so bad,” Louise said, skipping girlishly on the hard-packed snow. “You just have to have inner resources. I’m glad I have them; I think I have more than you, Morrison. I have more than most people. That’s what I said to myself when I moved here.”
    “Where are we going?” Morrison asked when they had accomplished several blocks. She had taken him west, along a street he was not familiar with, or was it the fog?
    “To find the others, of course,” she said, glancing back at him contemptuously. “We have to complete the circle.”
    Morrison followed without protest; he was relieved there would soon be others.
    She stopped in front of a medium-tall highrise. “They’re inside,” she said. Morrison went towards the front door, but she tugged at his arm.
    “You can’t go in that door,” she said. “It’s facing the wrong way. It’s the wrong door.”
    “What’s the matter with it?” Morrison asked. It might be the wrong door (and the longer he looked at it, plate glass and shining evilly, the more he saw what she meant), but it was the only one.
    “It faces east,” she said. “Don’t you know? The city is polarized north and south; the river splits it in two; the poles are the gas plant and the power plant. Haven’t you ever noticed the bridge joins them together? That’s how the current gets across. We have to keep the poles in our brains lined up with the poles of the city, that’s what Blake’s poetry is all about. You can’t break the current.”
    “Then how do we get in?” he said. She sat down in the snow; he was afraid again she was going to cry.
    “Listen,” he said hastily, “I’ll go in the door sideways and bring them out; that way I won’t break the current. You won’t have to gothrough the door at all. Who are they?” he asked as an afterthought.
    When he recognized the name he was elated: she wasn’t insane after all, the people were real, she had a purpose and a plan. This was probably just an elaborate way of arranging to see her friends.
    They were the Jamiesons. Dave was one of those with whom Morrison had exchanged pleasantries in the hallways but nothing further. His wife had a recent baby. Morrison found them in their Saturday shirts and jeans. He tried to explain what he wanted, which was difficult because he wasn’t sure. Finally he said he needed help. Only Dave could come, the wife had to stay behind with the baby.
    “I hardly know Louise, you know,” Dave volunteered in the elevator.
    “Neither do I,” said Morrison.
    Louise was waiting behind a short fir tree on the front lawn. She came out when she saw them. “Where’s the baby?” she said. “We need the baby to complete the circle. We
need
the baby. Don’t you know the country will split apart without it?” She stamped her foot at them angrily.
    “We can come back for it,” Morrison said, which pacified her. She said there were only two others they had to collect; she explained