"Again?"

I hesitated. Then I admitted it. "Yes. Again. I was captured. Brainwashed. I lived with a Tribe of Revelationists-"

"Oh, shit!"

". . . for almost a year. I finally escaped. But not before I saw what they were capable of." I had to stop for a moment. I had to wipe my eyes before I could continue; I hadn't realized how much it still hurt. "I learned a lot from them, yes. Okay, I admit it. Not everything they said was totally off the deep end. But I know who they are and how dangerous they are. And I broke their brainwashing on my own."

"You think so? You still look a little glassy-eyed to me. If I'd known . . ."

"You'd have turned me away, right? That's the famous BettyJohn compassion."

She hesitated. "No-but I wouldn't have trusted you near the kids either."

"Oh, come on, B-Jay! You're talking like a goddamned reactionary. The breakthrough exercises work no matter who applies them."

"Don't be stupid, Jim! Do you think this stuff is new to me? Give me a break! Most of the crap you're repeating is leftovers from the Technology of Consciousness Movement of the last century! Shit, you guys are all alike; you think you just invented enlightenment last week."

She pointed a finger at me, jabbing me hard in the chest. "Let me tell you something. Personal enlightenment seminars were the big fad when I was in college. They called them Effectiveness Training and Power Sourcing and Jargon Blasting. And everybody was doing Mode. You weren't alive until you'd done Mode. I had a lot of friends who disappeared into that black hole; some came back, some didn't, but while they were under the influence, it was always the beatific smile and the patronizing 'You have to experience it to understand.' I understood what was going on then, and it hasn't changed any now. Every day, you have to have a new transformation, a new breakthrough in possibility, a new level of bullshit and psychobabble!

"Hell, I didn't even do any of the seminars and I got sucked in for a while. I was one of the ones who was going to prove I could be just as enlightened without doing any seminars; I was too stupid to see that made me just as much a proselytizing evangelist as everybody else. And all of us were redefining our language every day, so we could map out the diverse new landscapes of responsibility. It was rabbit-hole city. Oh, we had conversations about conversation and learned about the possibilities of possibility. We got so good at it, we bludgeoned people to death with our enlightenment. We played caseworker with all of our relationships: parents, teachers, friends-and we couldn't understand why they were so repulsed when all we wanted to do was give them the gift of seeing how impoverished their lives had been. Oh, we were a self-righteous bunch of assholes.

"We handled each other's cases all day long. We scoped each other. We handled rackets and busted numbers. We metered and bench-marked and state-mastered. We did it all. And you know what? Our lives were fucked up even worse, because now we had a new level of bullshit to explain why they didn't work. I finally got wise, when I realized the cost to my soul.

"I didn't trust the Modies then. I trust them even less now that they're taking over the government. But most of all, I don't want Modies or neo-Revelationists or anyone else playing with these kids' heads, because these kids already have enough problems."

She finished with a look of finality, as if there was nothing more to say on the subject. And maybe there wasn't. Her mind was made up and nobody was going to change it. Her expression was tight, as if she was daring me to respond.

I realized something abruptly. Something I should have known all along. Betty-John was just as crazy as the rest of us, in her own charmless way.

Of course, I wanted to believe she had it all together. I wanted to believe that someone somewhere knew exactly what they were doing and why. I wanted to know that it was possible, because if it was possible for anyone else, then maybe it was possible for me too. But maybe it wasn't possible here.

"Well? Don't you have anything else to say?"

I shook my head. "It wouldn't do any good. Your mind is made up. I did what I thought was right. You don't think it was right. We both want what's best for the children. We each have different ideas. But you're the one who's entrusted with the responsibility. Not me. So it's your word that has to count, not mine." I thought for a moment longer, then added, "I wanted to be of service here. I still do. I'm sorry that you don't appreciate some of what I have to offer."

She opened her mouth and closed it just as suddenly. She looked surprised. She hadn't expected me to say what I just did. "Well," she said. "Well, I'm glad you realize it."

I nodded. I realized it. I realized a lot more than she knew. Family was just as much a cult as Jason's Tribe was. A different philosophy, a different leader, a different purpose, a different head game-but a cult nonetheless.

And either I wanted to be a part of it or I didn't.

The truth was, I wasn't sure what I wanted any more.

"I just want to help the kids," I said. And that much was true. She sighed. She ran a hand through her graying hair. She looked very tired. She shook her head in resignation. "Go do something where you can't get into any more trouble. I got your worm fences approved last night. Go put them up." Then she added, "Just stay away from me for a while. And stay away from the kids too. Even your own. I don't know how I'm going to clean up this mess. . . ."

It's impossible to build a fence that will keep a worm

Actually, out.

A full-grown Chtorran is like a Patton-6 tank with a mouth. A half-grown worm is the mouth without the tank attached. The best you can hope to do is slow the worm down-or at least make it so painfully uncomfortable for the creature to go over, under, or through the barricade that it looks for a way to go around instead.

The idea is to make the price of lunch higher than the worm is willing to pay.

That's what Jack Balaban and I were doing.

Using Duke's name and number again, I requisitioned enough worm fencing to cordon off the narrowest part of the peninsula with multiple rows of razor-ribbon and punji-barriers. Sooner or later, I knew, one of Uncle Ira's accounting programs was going to catch up with me; but in the meantime, I seemed to have an unlimited credit account; that is, Duke did.

A good fence would be tricky to install, yes, but if we were thorough, we might be able to buy ourselves a reasonable degree of safety. First, we would lay down a strip of razor-ribbon, several long coils of it, firmly anchored every half-meter by a spike in the ground. The razor-ribbon alone wouldn't stop the worms, but it would certainly stop any human beings working with worms. We needed to keep the renegades from getting to the punji-barriers; renegades had been caught hammering down breaks for their extraterrestrial partners.

Then, the first row of punji-strip would be installed just behind the razor-ribbon. Punji-strip came in huge rolls; you unrolled it where you wanted it and spiked it into the ground. What you got was a wide strip of aluminum spikes, unevenly spaced, pointing in all directions, mostly upward. The spikes were sharp and nasty looking and coated with microencapsulated bad news: poisons, ucrve jellies, and various forms of bacteria that seemed to like the vsides of a Chtorran.