Abendsen, with only the slightest change of expression, said, “There hasn’t been a Gestapo since 1947.”

“The SD, then, or whatever it is.”

“Would you explain?” Caroline said in a brisk voice.

“I want to,” Juliana said. “I drove up to Denver with one of them. They’re going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can’t find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won’t be anyone like me to put a stop to him.”

“You say ‘the next one,’ “ Abendsen said, after a pause. “What became of the one you rode up to Denver with? Why won’t he show up here?”

She said, “I cut his throat.”

“That’s quite something.” Hawthorne said. “To have a girl tell you that, a girl you never saw before in your life.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

He nodded. “Sure.” He smiled at her in a shy, gentle, forlorn way. Apparently it did not even occur to him not to believe her. “Thanks,” he said.

“Please hide from them,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “we did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book… about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we’re still taking great precautions.” His voice had a weary, dry tone.

“You could at least carry a weapon,” his wife said. “I know someday someone you invite in and converse with will shoot you down, some Nazi expert paying you back; and you’ll be philosophizing just this way. I forsee it.”

“They can get you,” Hawthorne said, “if they want to. Charged wire and High Castle or not.”

You’re so fatalistic, Juliana thought. Resigned to your own destruction. Do you know that, too, the way you knew the world in your book?

Juliana said, “The oracle wrote your book. Didn’t it?”

Hawthorne said, “Do you want the truth?”

“I want it and I’m entitled to it,” she answered, “for what I’ve done. Isn’t that so? You know it’s so.”

“The oracle,” Abendsen said, “was sound asleep all through the writing of the book. Sound asleep in the corner of the office.” His eyes showed no merriment; instead, his face seemed longer, more somber than ever.

“Tell her,” Caroline said. “She’s right; she’s entitled to know, for what she did on your behalf.” To Juliana she said, “I’ll tell you, then, Mrs. Frink. One by one Hawth made the choices. Thousands of them. By means of the lines. Historic period. Subject. Characters. Plot. It took years. Hawth even asked the oracle what sort of success it would be. It told him that it would be a very great success, the first real one of his career. So you were right. You must use the oracle quite a lot yourself, to have known.”

Juliana said, “I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you ever think of asking it that? And why one about the Germans and the Japanese losing the war? Why that particular story and no other one? What is there it can’t tell us directly, like it always has before? This must be different, don’t you think?”

Neither Hawthorne nor Caroline said anything.

“It and I,” Hawthorne said at last, “long ago arrived at an agreement regarding royalties. If I ask it why it wrote Grasshopper, I’ll wind up turning my share over to it. The question implies I did nothing but the typing, and that’s neither true nor decent.”

“I’ll ask it,” Caroline said. “If you won’t.”

“It’s not your question to ask,” Hawthorne said. “Let her ask.” To Juliana he said, “You have an unnatural mind. Are you aware of that?”

Juliana said, “Where’s your copy? Mine’s in my car, back at the motel. I’ll get it, if you won’t let me use yours.”

Turning, Hawthorne started off. She and Caroline followed, through the room of people, toward a closed door. At the door he left them. When he re-emerged, they all saw the black-backed twin volumes.

“I don’t use the yarrow stalks,” he said to Juliana. “I can’t get the hang of them; I keep dropping them.”

Juliana seated herself at a coffee table in the corner. “I have to have paper to write on and a pencil.”

One of the guests brought her paper and pencil. The people in the room moved in to form a ring around her and the Abendsens, listening and watching.

“You may say the question aloud,” Hawthorne said. “We have no secrets here.”

Juliana said, “Oracle, why did you write The Grasshopper Lies Heavy? What are we supposed to learn?”

“You have a disconcertingly superstitious way of phrasing your question,” Hawthorne said. But he had squatted down to witness the coin throwing. “Go ahead,” he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins with holes in the center. “I generally use these.”

She began throwing the coins; she felt calm and very much herself. Hawthorne wrote down her lines for her. When she had thrown the coins six times, he gazed down and said:

“Sun at the top. Tui at the bottom. Empty in the center.”

“Do you know what hexagram that is?” she said. “Without using the chart?”

“Yes,” Hawthorne said.

“It’s Chung Fu,” Juliana said. “Inner Truth. I know without using the chart, too. And I know what it means.”

Raising his head, Hawthorne scrutinized her. He had now an almost savage expression. “It means, does it, that my book is true?”

“Yes,” she said.

With anger he said, “Germany and Japan lost the war?”

“Yes.”

Hawthorne, then, closed the two volumes and rose to his feet; he said nothing.

“Even you don’t face it,” Juliana said.

For a time he considered. His gaze had become empty, Juliana saw. Turned inward, she realized. Preoccupied, by himself… and then his eyes became clear again; he grunted, started.

“I’m not sure of anything,” he said.

“Believe,” Juliana said.

He shook his head no.

“Can’t you?” she said. “Are you sure?”

Hawthorne Abendsen said, “Do you want me to autograph a copy of The Grasshopper for you?”

She, too, rose to her feet. “I think I’ll go,” she said. “Thank you very much. I’m sorry if I disrupted your evening. It was kind of you to let me in.” Going past him and Caroline, she made her way through the ring of people, from the living room and into the bedroom where her coat and purse were.

As she was putting her coat on, Hawthorne appeared behind her. “Do you know what you are?” He turned to Caroline, who stood beside him. “This girl is a dathnon. A little chthonic spirit that—” He lifted his hand and rubbed his eyebrow, partially dislodging his glasses in doing so. “That roams tirelessly over the face of the earth.” He restored his glasses in place. “She’s doing what’s instinctive to her, simply expressing her being. She didn’t mean to show up here and do harm; it simply happened to her, just as the weather happens to us. I’m glad she came. I’m not sorry to find this out, this revelation she’s had through the book. She didn’t know what she was going to do here or find out. I think we’re all of us lucky. So let’s not be angry about it; okay?”

Caroline said, “She’s terribly, terribly disruptive.”

“So is reality,” Hawthorne said. He held out his hand to Juliana. “Thank you for what you did in Denver,” he said.

She shook hands with him. “Good night,” she said. “Do as your wife says. Carry a hand weapon, at least.”

“No,” he said. “I decided that a long time ago. I’m not going to let it bother me. I can lean on the oracle now and then, if I do get edgy, late at night in particular. It’s not bad in such a situation.” He smiled a little. “Actually, the only thing that bothers me any more is knowing that all these bums standing around here listening and taking in everything are drinking up all the liquor in the house, while we’re talking.” Turning, he strode away, back to the sideboard to find fresh ice for his drink.

“Where are you going now that you’ve finished here?” Caroline said.

“I don’t know.” The problem did not bother her. I must be a little like him, she thought; I won’t let certain things worry me no matter how important they are. “Maybe I’ll go back to my husband, Frank. I tried to phone him tonight; I might try again. I’ll see how I feel later on.”