"What are your plans for Hanes?" I said.

"Well find him," Maje said.

"Then they'll find him," Longboy said.

"Belly up in shit's creek," Maje said.

Longboy kept blowing on the gnarled butt to keep it lit. He never put it to his mouth to smoke. He merely whistled into its tip, forcing an occasional glow, man the primate making fire, a brown hem appearing on the paper as the heat bit in.

"Whose picture is on those bubble gum cards?" Bohack said.

"Watney's."

"Mind if we take a look? Just out of curiosity. Maje, go look."

"I see bubble gum cards."

"Whose picture on them?"

"Watney's," Maje said.

"Tear one card carefully apart, separating front from back."

"I don't know if they're thick enough to tear that way."

"Tear," Bohack said. "Pretend you're tearing apart an English muffin. Gently. Little by little."

"Here we go."

"What's in there?"

"Nothing."

"Take five more cards and tear them the same way. Front from back. English muffins. Easy now."

"What are you looking for?" I said.

"I'm not sure," Bohack said. "But Watney is Watney, a man with a reputation for being unpredictable. I'm sorry we've had to encroach on Bucky Wunderlick like this. But at least it's just about over now. We're on the verge of freeing Bucky Wunderlick from connection with the product and we won't have to encroach anymore."

Longboy licked the tip of the butt and returned it to his pocket. On his field jacket was an 82nd Airborne patch. Maje looked at Bohack.

"Take five more cards and tear them front from back," Bohack said. "Just five more. Just out of curiosity. A random sampling. Five more and then just five more. Front from back. Gently. English muffins."

20

"The effect of the tapes is that they're tapes."

"Sure, sure, sure. I agree. Absolutely. I'm with you. It's you and me. Absolutely. Teammates. Rah, rah, rah." Globke was a toy motor in my ear, evidence of the muggy passion of telephones, his voice feverish with allegiance. He was largehearted in his sovereignty, dispensing benedictions to every quarter, a healer and teacher, prepared to animate what was moribund in me, to lash what was reluctant, to tease and feed the smallest fires of my mind.

"Talk, I'm listening. Tell me freely what's worrying that boy-genius head of yours. I'm sitting here with so many answers they're coming out of my clothes. Just make sure you don't ask me where I was with the tapes last night because I can only answer that in the flesh, person to person, and even then I'll have to whisper it in your ear just to make sure there's no security leak. I don't tolerate laxness in that area. My people know that. So do my people's people."

"How do I face crowds?" I said. "I can t do the material on the tapes. I don't want to do old material. I don't have new material. So how do I get back out? I don't know how I do that."

"You don't know how because it's not your appointed task to know how. It's not your professional identity. It's not your blood and muscle. But I know how, Bucky. I know exactly how." "Okay."

"Guest appearances," he said. "We've got bands touring all over the country. You show up with one group in one place, a different group two nights later a thousand miles away. Surprise appearances. We don't announce anything to anybody. This way we build up tremendous interest. It's not only your return to action. It's not only a secret appearance. It's a whole series of appearances, different places, different times, weeks on end, never any clue where you'll show up, or when, or which group. Nobody knows, including the bands you appear with. You just show up, say hello and go on. We buüd up fantastic interest and suspense. Tremendous speculation on your movements and whereabouts. You're in Seattle one night, New Orleans the next. Crowds go wild wanting to know where you're going to turn up next. Every band you perform with is under contract to Transparanoia but that's the only clue anybody has and we've got enough bands blasting away out there to make it impossible for anybody to pinpoint your itinerary. We build up unbelievable publicity for the tapes. All these performances lead up to the release of the mountain tapes on a two-record set. By the time you're on the road, word will be out about the tapes. So all the time you're out there, you're building up unprecedented interest in the tapes. You tour. Then we release the album. Then you tour again. I know what you're about to ask."

"What material do I perform?"

"You're about to ask what material you perform for all these concerts weeks on end with totally different groups. Bucky, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. You can jam, you can whistle, you can hum, you can do top-forty AM schlock, you can just stand there and shout at the audience. It doesn't make any difference what you do. The idea is to get you out there, get the whole mystique going again, make them wet their pants, make them yell and scream. Jam. That's what I say. Tap the mike and start picking. Do twenty minutes' guitar work and get the hell off. Make loud sounds, that's the thing. Move your lips, that's even better. Stand there and move your lips. Don't think of it as a performance. Think of it as an appearance. You're back on the road, that's the thing we're concerned about. Twenty minutes and run for the airport. You pick up one group in one city, zoom over to another city and another group, hit a third city and a third group, jump into a fourth city and pick up the original group there. We build up incredible interest this way."

"And the day after my funeral you release the tapes."

"You can't wait to get out there. Admit it, Bucky. You know the truth about the tour. You know you need the tour. It won't be long. Six or eight weeks, more or less. Then we release the material on the tapes. Then you hit the road for six or eight more weeks. A two-record set. Early spring release. Obvious title: The Mountain Tapes. We'd be crazy to call it anything else since that's the name everybody knows it by. Right now we're culling. We're editing down to twenty cuts. Getting rid of tape hiss and other noises. Snipping and clipping. Moving things around. Making up titles. Mixing in some instrumental work on about three quarters of the cuts. The thing's going to be rough as hell. But I think that's what we need right now. We've had enough of instant phasing and sixteen track and synthesizers. The people want something plain. Plain but complicated. The kind of material you and only you can deliver. I don't go in for levels in popular music and I don't even know if this is level-material or not. Maybe that's the power of it. Is it one level or two levels or no levels at all? Are the levels simple levels or profound levels? That's the power of the mountain tapes as I view it from my own particular viewpoint. It's not my sound. It's not the sound I listen to when I look across the river from my bedroom window on a summer night and my wife is sitting up in bed reading the Eastern teachers and there's moonlight on the river and the great rotting towers of Manhattan are arrayed across the night and I turn off the air conditioner and open a window and insert a cartridge in my music system. Your sound frankly isn't the sound I listen to at times like that. But it's a valid sound and it should sell by the carload. So right now we're culling and mixing and refining. The technical minds are hard at work. We aim for early spring. Definitely a two-record set. Positively called The Mountain Tapes."

"First pressing of a hundred million billion," I said.

"I'm in the middle of arrangements for the tour. Everybody's working on it here. Late nights, weekends, quickie lunches. It'll be unprecedented, Bucky. Give me a few days to work out the second tour. Then well talk again. I've got tour one just about nailed down. Then we have to do some coordinating. Then we have to work out chart cities versus test cities. It's a valid sound. No doubt about it. I'll tell you where you'll be traveling the first time around. You want to hear? I've got the list right here marked confidential in big red letters."