But first, you and I must come to an agreement. You and I must make a bargain. I want you to take me to the Ladder, just as I took you." He smiled. "Will you do that if I tell you how you got in here and who you're working for?" "That would be entirely unfair," said the Cat. "You know my power. I don't have to tell you. I'm only going to tell you that you're an agent. That's as much as I can give you, if you know what I mean." He hesitated, then nodded. "Of course," he said. "You're working for the Cat. And why shouldn't I have been? You're the one who made sure the gate was unlocked, in spite of my best efforts to hold it shut." He leaned back in his chair. "I've been at this a long time," he said. "I got here as an apprentice. I've done many jobs for the Cat. A lot of them were important. Some weren't. It was the last one I ever took that finally put me here." "No matter," said the Cat. "I'm on my way up. I'm already moving." "I wasn't in favor of it," said the boy. "It was a mess. A complete disaster. It ruined me." "We all have to pay the price of our mistakes," said the Cat. "That's the difference between ordinary people and the truly special. We make mistakes, but they usually work out for the best." "Why not forget about it?" the boy asked. "The world has moved on. Nothing has changed." "But _you_ have," said the Cat. "You're not the same man you were before." "That's very kind of you to say," he told the Cat. "But I have something else to do. I've got to see to it that the gate is unlocked." "Then tell me why you've been wasting time on me. I could be up there already." "Because I'm too scared to trust you," said the boy. "You have nothing to be afraid of. I was the one who worked out the theory of getting through the lock. You just did the math." "But the point is I don't know what your system is. I could do the math wrong. If I take you down there, it would be on my head." "I would take that risk," said the Cat. The boy smiled. "But then what good would you be to me?" "You must remember I have my uses," said the Cat. "There are a great many things we have to do for the Organization. And right now, at this moment, your name is up there on the list." "So are yours," said the boy. "There's a place for you in the hierarchy too. The Organization doesn't have to be top-heavy. The cat and the boy will make a good balance." The cat smiled, and the boy was right. The cat was very wise. "You have a name?" asked the boy. "Call me Yevgeny," said the cat. "It's a name of some significance. The cat is the oldest form of human thought. The Russian Revolution, the Russian Revolutionaries, the cat. You should be grateful." "Thank you," said the boy. "And you're Yevgeny, is that right?" "Yes. I was always a very practical man. I took what I needed from the universe. And it's a good name, Yevgeny. Yevgeny Yefimovich Rasputin. It's a common enough name. We all have the right to it." "That's what you want, isn't it?" said the boy. "It could be," said Yevgeny. "All right then. Call me Peter. Peter Petrovich Vanderman. Now that I'm here, it might be a good idea to go have a look at the sky." "There's something wrong," said Yevgeny. "I'm not certain what, but something's wrong." The Cat's eyes opened, opened, and the Cat's pupils were looking straight into his, then he looked away and opened his eyes again. "What is it?" asked the boy. "Someone is outside the gate," said Yevgeny. "I have never seen him before. He's looking around. He doesn't seem to be aware of the gate. He must be an old man. He must have been born before the gate opened. I'm only guessing about that." "Well, let's keep our eyes open and see what we can see," said the boy. Yevgeny shook his head, in a negative gesture. "There's a lot of space between us," he said. "Too much. He'd never think to look here. He might see something we can't see. "The gate. You open it, you go through, and you close it behind you. Then you wait for the word to get back from the other side. Wait for someone else to come through." "Can you see him?" asked the boy. "Can you see him now?" "No," said Yevgeny. "There are too many trees. Even if I did know how to look, I wouldn't be able to see him through all the foliage. Still, he's got to be close. He could be anywhere. Anyone. He could be anywhere." "Let's get up and look," said the boy. "There's no way to do that," said Yevgeny. "The gate's too far down. He'd be out of sight." "We could open the gate," said the boy. "Let him see what's here. We could send him back. I'll do it. You just watch." "I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to close the gate," said Yevgeny. "Even if you tried, the momentum of the gate would carry it closed. If he doesn't want to come through the gate, he's safe from you, as long as you're here. As long as you're here." "Well, that's too bad," said the boy. "You're trying to protect me." "I'm not," said Yevgeny. "I'm not trying to protect you. I'm trying to protect myself. And I'm doing a very good job of it. It wouldn't make sense for me to open the gate, then let you through. If you stayed, you would be a much more interesting prospect. He might come through the gate again, and I could arrange to see him. But he's not going to come through here, so it doesn't matter." "He can't come through if you don't open the gate," said the boy. "No," said Yevgeny. "I suppose he couldn't. Still, he might come through if I just happened to be inside the gate when he came back. And he might not. And if he does, what if he's here to kill me? I'll have to remember that. Still, it might be amusing to open the gate and see what happens. Just for a joke." "No," said the boy. "No?" "No, I think not." "What did you have in mind?" asked the cat. "No, I have nothing in mind." "But you wanted to make sure I didn't try to get out of here," said Yevgeny. "You think I'll be out there waiting for you. Out there in the corridor. With a gun. Or in some other corridor. And we can't be sure how you'll come in here. There could be any number of doors or gateways in this building. It's a very strange place, after all. We can't be sure you won't have a portal somewhere else." "You don't think I can break out?" asked the boy. "That's exactly what you're worried about," said Yevgeny. "You don't know what you might break out into. How should I know if I'm here?" The boy laughed. "You're just making things up. There's a back door. There's a way out." "Then it must be guarded," said Yevgeny. "Otherwise the Organization wouldn't want to keep it that way. There would be no point in them going to the trouble of keeping it closed if the one who went through could just open it from the inside." The cat was smiling. "I wouldn't worry about it," it said. "There's too much else for you to worry about. I'm not a prisoner here, you are. But if you get hungry, if you get thirsty, if you want something, or if you want to sleep, you can always go into the other room." "What other room?" asked the boy. "The other room." "I don't understand." "Then that's a blessing," said the cat. "Now wait a second," said Yevgeny. "Can you do that? Can you get back into