"I've got to start telling you the truth, George," Hagbard began hesitantly, as the Midget, Carmel and Dr. Horace Naismith collided in front of the door of the Sands Hotel ("Watch the fuck where you're going," Carmel growled), and she was at the door, her heart was pounding, an intuition was forming in her mind, and she knocked (and Peter Jackson began dialing Epicene Wildeblood), and she was sure of it, and she was afraid of being sure because she might be wrong, and the Midget said to Dr. Naismith "Rude bastard, wasn't he?" and the door opened, and the door of Milo O. Flanagan's office opened to admit Cassandra Acconci, and her heart stopped, and Dr. Nosferatu screamed, "The door. She's in the door. The door in the desert. He eats Carmels," and it was him and she was in his arms and she was weeping and laughing and asking, "Where have you been, baby?" And Saul closed the door behind her and drew her further into the room. "I'm not a cop anymore," he said, "I'm on the other side."

"What?" Rebecca noticed there was a new thing in his eyes, a thing for which she had no word.

"You can stop worrying that you'll get back on horse," he went on gaily. "And if you've ever been afraid of your sexual fantasies, don't be. We've all got them. Saint Bernards!"

But even that wasn't as weird as the new thing in his eyes.

"Baby," she said, "baby.What the hell is this?"

"I wanted sex with my father, when I was two years old. When did you have that thing about the Saint Bernard?"

"When I was eleven or twelve, I think. Just before my first period. My God, you must have been a lot further away than I ever imagined." She was beginning to recognize the new thing. It wasn't intelligence; he had always had that. With awe, she realized it was what the ancients called wisdom.

"I've always had a thing about black women, just like your thing about black men," he went on. "I think everybody in this country has a touch of it. The blacks have it about us, too. I was in one head, a brilliant black guy, musician, scientist, poet, a million talents, and white women were like the Holy Grail to him. And your fantasy about Spiro Agnew-I had one just like that about Ilse Koch, a Nazi bitch from before your time. It was the same thing in both cases, revenge. Not real sex, hate-sex. Oh, we're all so crazy-in-the-head."

Rebecca backed up and sat down on the bed. "It's too much, too fast, I'm scared. I can see you don't have any contempt for me, but, Lord, can I live knowing that somebody else knows every single repressed desire I have?"

"Yes," Saul said calmly. "And you're mistaken about Time. I can't know every secret, darling. I've only had a smattering of them. A handful. There are a dozen people right now who've been through my head the same way, and I can look any one of them in the eye. The things I know about them!" He laughed.

"It's still too fast," Rebecca said. "You disappear, and then you come back knowing thongs about me that I only half know myself, and you're not a cop anymore… What do you mean, you've joined 'the other side'? The Mafia? The Morituri groups?"

"No," Saul answered happily. "Much further out than that. Darling, I've been driven mad by the world's best brainwashers and put back together again by a computer that does psychotherapy, predicts the future and steers a submarine all at once. On the way, I learned things about humanity and the universe that it would take a year to tell you. And I don't have much time right now, because I've got to fly to Las Vegas. In two or three days, if everything works out, I'll be able to show you, not just tell you-"

"Are you reading my mind right now?" Rebecca asked, still awed and nervous.

Saul laughed again. "It isn't that simple. It takes years of training, and even then it's like an old radio would you like to hear a scientific lecture while you're being laid? That's a perversion we've never tried before." His hand moved down from her cheek to her neck and then began unbuttoning her blouse.

("There's a Morituri bomb factory in your building," Cassandra Acconci said flatly. "On the seventeenth floor. The name on the buzzer is the same as yours."

"My brother!" Milo O. Flanagan bellowed. "Right under my nose! That freaking faggot!")

"Oh, Saul. Oh, Saul, Saul," Rebecca closed her eyes as the mouth tightened on her nipple… and Dr. Horace Naismith crossed the lobby of the Sands, affixing the VSR badge to his lap'el, and passed the Midget again… "Well," the Attorney General told the President, "one solution, of course, is to nuke Las Vegas. But that wouldn't solve the problem of the possible carriers who could have hopped a plane already and might be anywhere in the country now, or anywhere in the world." While the President washes down three Librium, a Tofranil and an Elavil, the Vice President asks thoughtfully, "Suppose we just distribute the antidote to party workers and ride this thing out?" He is feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had an appalling evening in New York due to his impulsiveness in answering a personal ad which had touched his heart…

("Thank you Cassandra," Milo A. Flanagan said fervently. "I'm eternally grateful to you."

"One helping hand deserves another," Cassandra replied; she remembered how Milo and Smiling Jim Tre-pomena had helped her get the abortion the time she was knocked up by that Canvera character. Her father had wanted to send her to New York for a legal D amp; C, but Milo had pointed out that it would look kind of funny to some people for the daughter of a high KCUF spokesman to have an official abortion. "Besides," Smiling Jim had added, "you don't want to fool around with them New York Jew doctors. They might do dirty things to you. Just trust me, child; we've got the country's best-qualified criminal abortionists in Cincinnati." Actually, though, the real reason Cassandra was blowing the whistle on Padre Pederastia's bomb emporium was to annoy Simon Moon, whom she had been trying to get into her bed ever since she met him at the Friendly Stranger Coffee House six months before. Simon hadn't been interested, due to his obsession with black women, who represented the Holy Grail to him.)

"Wildeblood here," the cultured drawl came over the wire.

"Have you finished your review yet?" Peter Jackson asked, crushing another cigarette butt in his ashtray and worrying about lung cancer.

"Yes, and you'll love it. I really tear these two smart-asses apart." Wildeblood was enthusiastic. "Listen to this: 'a pair of nursery Nietzsches dreaming of a psychedelic Superman.' And this: 'a plot that is only a put-on, characters who are cardboard, and a pretense of scholarship that amounts to sheer bluff.' But this is the crusher; listen: 'a constant use of obscene language for shock effect until the reader begins to feel as depressed as an unwilling spectator at a quarrel between a fishwife and a lobster-pot pirate.' Don't you think that will get quoted at all the best cocktail parties this season?"

"I suppose so. The book's a real stinker, eh?"

"Heavens, I wouldn't know for sure. I told you yesterday, it's absurdly long. Three volumes, in fact. Boring as hell. I only had time to skim it. But listen to this, dear boy: 'If The Lord of the Rings is a fairy tale for adults, sophisticated readers will quickly recognize this monumental miscarriage as a fairy tale for paranoids.' That refers to the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the plot, if there is one, seems to revolve around. Nicely worded, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah, sure," Peter said, crossing off book review on his pad. "Send it over. I'll pay the messenger."

Epicene Wildeblood, hanging up, crossed off Confrontation on his own pad, found Time next on the list, and picked up another book to be immortalized by his devastating witticisms. He was feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had a disastrous evening the night before. Somebody had answered his personal ad about his "interest in Greek Culture" and he had thrilled at the thought of a new asshole to conquer; the asshole, unfortunately, had turned out to be the Vice President of the United States, who was interested only in declaiming about the glorious achievements of the military junta that had ruled in Athens. When Eppy, despairing of sex, had tried to steer the conversation to Plato at least, the VP asked, "Are you sure he was a Greek? That sounds like a wop name to me."