Intensity

helplessness and dependence deeply satisfy her. The greatest curse of humanity's high intelligence is that, in most members of the species, it leads to a yearning to be more than they are. All men and women, in Vess's view, are fundamentally nothing other than animals-smart animals, indeed, but animals nonetheless; reptiles, in fact, evolved from whatever fish with legs first crawled out of the primordial sea. They are, he knows, motivated and formed solely by sensory stimuli, yet unable to admit to the primacy of physical sensation over intellect and emotion. They are even frightened of the reptile consciousness within, its needs and hungers, and they attempt to restrict its sensation seeking by using lies such as love, guilt, hate, courage, loyalty, and honor.
        This is the philosophy of Mr. Edgler Vess. He embraces his reptilian nature. The glory of him is to be found in his unmatched accretion of sensations. This is a functional philosophy, requiring its adherent to endorse neither the black-and-white values that so hamper religious persons nor the embarrassing contradictions of the situational ethics that characterize both the modern atheist and those whose religion is politics.
        Life is . Vess lives. That is the sum of it.
        Driving north on Highway 101, finishing the second of his two Hershey bars, Vess considers, not for the first time, that there is a similarity between the texture of melting chocolate and that of thickening blood.
        He recalls the restful silence of the blood pooled around Mrs. Templeton in the shower stall before he disturbed it by turning on the cold water.
        The memory of the hollow drumming in that shower makes him aware of the coldness of all the rain as yet unleashed by the pending storm toward which he is driving.
        He sees a quick blush of lightning along the face of the clouds, and he knows that it tastes like ozone.
        Above the monotonous rumble of the motor-home engine, he hears a peal of thunder, and that sound is also a vivid image in his mind: the young Asian's eyes opening wide, wide, wide with the first crash of the shotgun.
        Even in the airless void between galaxies: the light and the darkness, color, texture, motion, shape, and pain.

    
        The highway rose, and the forests crowded close. On a wide curve, the headlights of the Honda swept across the flanking hills, revealing that some of the looming trees were immense spruces and pines. Soon, perhaps, redwoods.
        Chyna kept her foot down hard on the accelerator. To the best of her recollection, this was the first time she had ever broken a speed limit. She'd never been fined for a traffic violation; but she would be grateful now if a cop pulled her over.
        Her unblemished driving record resulted from her preference for moderation in all things, including the pace at which she ordinarily drove. Judging by the catastrophes that she had seen befall others, survival was closely related to moderation, and her whole life was about survival, as any nun's life might be defined by the word faith or any politician's by power. She seldom drank more than one glass of wine, never used drugs, engaged in no dangerous sports, ate a diet low in fat and salt and sugar, stayed out of neighborhoods reputed to be dangerous, never expressed strong opinions, and in general was safely inconspicuous-all in the interest of getting by, hanging on, surviving.
        Against the odds, she had already survived the events of the past few hours. The killer didn't even know that she existed . She had made it. She was free. It was over. The smart thing, the wise thing, the sane thing-the Chyna thing-to do was to let him go, just let him get away, pull off to the side of the road, stop, surrender to the shakes that she was strenuously repressing, and thank God that she was untouched and alive.
        As she drove, Chyna argued against her previous conviction, insisting that the teenage girl in the cellar, Ariel of the angelic face, wasn't real. The photo might be of a girl whom he had already killed. The story of her incarceration might be only a sick fantasy, a psychotic's version of a Brothers Grimm tale, Rapunzel underground, merely a mind game that he'd been playing with the two clerks.
        "Liar," she called herself.
        The girl in the photo was alive somewhere, imprisoned. Ariel was no fantasy. Indeed, she was Chyna; they were one and the same, because