"No such thing," Stone said, but his voice – even to him – sounded feeble. "Perhaps I could discuss this with you informally. I did falsify Ian Duncan's test score. Now, maybe my motives for doing it -"

Doyle interrupted, "Aren't you jealous of Duncan now? What with his success with the jug, White House-ward?"

There was silence.

"This could be," Stone admitted at last. "But it doesn't change the fact that by all rights Ian Duncan shouldn't be living here; he should be evicted, my motives notwithstanding. Look it up in the Communal Apartment-building Code. I know there's a section covering a situation like this."

"But you can't get out of here," the sky pilot said, "without confessing; you have to satisfy the machine. You're attempting to force eviction of a neighbor to fulfill your own emotional needs. Confess that, and then perhaps we can discuss the code ruling as it pertains to Duncan."

Stone groaned and once more attached the electrodes to his scalp. "All right," he grated. "I hate Ian Duncan because he's artistically gifted and I'm not. I'm willing to be examined by a twelve-resident jury of my neighbors to see what the penalty for my sin is – but I insist that Duncan be given another relpol test! I won't give up on this; he has no right to be living here among us. It's morally and legally wrong!"

"At least you're being honest, now," Doyle said.

"Actually," Stone said, "I enjoy jug band playing; I liked their music, the other night. But I have to act in what I believe to be the communal interest."

The confessionator, it seemed to him, snorted in derision as it popped a second card. But perhaps it was only his imagination.

"You're just getting yourself deeper," Doyle said, reading the card. "Look at this." He passed the card to Stone. "Your mind is a riot of confused, ambivalent motives. When was the last time you confessed?"

Flushing, Stone mumbled, "I think last August. Pepe Jones was the sky pilot, then."

"A lot of work will have to be done with you," Doyle said, lighting a cigarette and leaning back in his chair.

The opening number on their White House performance, they had decided after much discussion and argument, would be the Bach "Chaconne in D." Al had always liked it, despite the difficulties involved, the double-stopping and all. Even thinking about the "Chaconne" made Ian nervous. He wished, now that it had been decided, that he had held out for the simpler "Fifth Unaccompanied Cello Suite." But too late now. Al had sent the information on to the White House A & R – artists and repertory – secretary, Harold Slezak.

Al said, "Don't worry; you've got the number two jug in this. Do you mind being second jug to me?"

"No," Ian said. It was a relief, actually; Al had the far more difficult part.

Outside the perimeter of Jalopy Jungle No. 3 the papoola moved, crisscrossing the sidewalk in its gliding, quiet pursuit of a sales prospect. It was only ten in the morning and no one worth collaring had come along, as yet. Today the lot had set down in the hilly section of Oakland, California, among the winding tree-lined streets of the better residential section. Across from the lot, Ian could see the Joe Louis, a peculiarly-shaped but striking apartment building of a thousand units, mostly occupied by well-to-do Negroes. The building, in the morning sun, looked especially neat and cared for. A guard, with badge and gun, patrolled the entrance, stopping anyone who did not live there from entering.

"Slezak has to okay the program," Al reminded him. "Maybe Nicole won't want to hear the 'Chaconne'; she's got very specialized tastes and they're changing all the time."

In his mind Ian saw Nicole, propped up in her enormous bed, in her pink, frilly robe, her breakfast on a tray beside her as she scanned the program schedules presented to her for her approval. Already she's heard about us, he thought. She knows of our existence. In that case, we really do exist. Like a child that has to have its mother watching what it does; we're brought into being, validated consensually, by Nicole's gaze.

And when she takes her eye off us, he thought, then what? What happens to us afterward? Do we disintegrate, sink back into oblivion?

Back, he thought, into random, unformed atoms. Where we came from… the world of nonbeing. The world we've been in all our lives, up until now.

"And," Al said, "she may ask us for an encore. She may even request a particular favorite. I've researched it, and it seems she sometimes asks to hear Schumann's 'The Happy Farmer.' Got that in mind? We'd better work up 'The Happy Farmer,' just in case." He blew a few toots on his jug, thoughtfully.

"I can't do it," Ian said abruptly. "I can't go on. It means too much to me. Something will go wrong; we won't please her and they'll boot us out. And we'll never be able to forget it."

"Look," Al began. "We have the papoola. And that gives us -" He broke off. A tall, stoop-shouldered elderly man in an expensive natural-fiber blue pin-stripe suit was coming up the sidewalk. "My God, it's Luke himself," Al said. He looked frightened. "I've only seen him twice before in my life. Something must be wrong."

"Better reel in the papoola," Ian said. The papoola had begun to move toward Loony Luke.

With a bewildered expression on his face Al said, "I can't." He fiddled desperately with the controls at his waist. "It won't respond."

The papoola reached Luke, and Luke bent down, picked it up and continued on toward the lot, the papoola under his arm.

"He's taken precedence over me," Al said. He looked at his brother numbly.

The door of the little structure opened and Loony Luke entered. "We received a report that you've been using this on your own time, for purposes of your own," he said to Al, his voice low and gravelly. "You were told not to do that; the papoolas belong to the lots, not to the operators."

Al said, "Aw, come on, Luke."

"You ought to be fired," Luke said, "but you're a good salesman so I'll keep you on. Meanwhile, you'll have to make your quota without help." Tightening his grip on the papoola, he started back out. "My time is valuable; I have to go." He saw Al's jug. "That's not a musical instrument; it's a thing to put whiskey in."

Al said, "Listen, Luke, this is publicity. Performing for Nicole means that the network of jalopy jungles will gain prestige; got it?"

"I don't want prestige," Luke said, pausing at the door. "There's no catering to Nicole Thibodeaux by me; let her run her society the way she wants and I'll run the jungles the way I want. She leaves me alone and I leave her alone and that's fine with me. Don't mess it up. Tell Slezak you can't appear and forget about it; no grown man in his right senses would be hooting into an empty bottle anyhow."

"That's where you're wrong," Al said. "Art can be found in the most mundane daily walks of life, like in these jugs for instance."

Luke, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick, said, "Now you don't have a papoola to soften the First Family up for you. Better think about that… do you really expect to make it without the papoola?"

After a pause Al said to Ian, "He's right. The papoola did it for us. But – hell, let's go on anyhow."

"You've got guts," Luke said. "But no sense. Still, I have to admire you. I can see why you've been a top notch salesman for the organization; you don't give up. Take the papoola the night you perform at the White House and then return it to me the next morning." He tossed the round, bug-like creature to Al; grabbing it, Al hugged it against his chest like a big pillow. "Maybe it would be good publicity for the jungles," Luke said. "But I know this. Nicole doesn't like us. Too many people have slipped out of her hands by means of us; we're a leak in mama's structure and mama knows it." He grinned, showing gold teeth.