— They're comic books. Take them with you and read them.
— I don't want to read them.
— No take them, take them. They're good clean fun, one there on God creating the universe and there's a really juicy one on the wages of sin take them along, hand them out on the subway.
— And don't start that again.
— I start it? Good God Lester you're the missionary, you're that skinny kid in the cheap black suit, the black tie and that cheap white shirt you washed out every night in the…
— Who are you working for, McCandless. He waved away a fresh cloud of smoke coming down from the file, turning up folders stacked on the floor with the point of a boot. — You've got some job here, you know that? he came on, unrolling a map far enough for a glimpse of familiar coastline to let it go with a snap, picking up a notebook to riffle blank pages, dropping it to hold up a glossy square of colour. — What's this.
— What does it look like.
— It looks like an infrared scanning. I know what it looks like. Where. Where was it. He stood there kicking at a heap of magazines, Geotimes, Journal of Geophysical Research, Science, — we lost track of you there for a while, you were out in Texas? Oklahoma? I saw your name in the paper didn't I?
— How in hell do I know what you saw in the paper.
— Testifying as the big expert witness? the big authority on the age of the earth? One of those trials over teaching science in the schools, you were the big…
— Genesis, teaching laundered Genesis in the schools where do you think those damned comic books came from. Try to teach them real sdence they'll run you out of town, tell them the earth's more than ten thousand years old they'll lynch you, the same damned smug stup…
— You wrote this? He'd straightened up with a magazine crushed open in the heap. — What did you find up there.
— Up where.
— The Gregory Rift, it's about the Gregory Rift.
— I know what it's about, that's my name on it isn't it? Take it, take and read it.
— I don't want to read it. Were you up there for Klinger?
— I wasn't up there for anybody.
— What did you find up there.
— Same thing the Leakeys found up there fifty years ago, those fossil remains they dug out of the volcanic ash on Lake Rudolf read it, take it and read it.
— You ought to stick to this, McCandless. You ought to stick to writing science, you know that? The magazine went tossed to the floor, — your fiction is really rotten, you know that? He'd kicked aside a cobwebbed roll of canvas, the black on white, or was it white on black roll of a hide, getting over to run down a row of books in the bookshelf, Plate Tectonics, Second Gondwana Symposium, Continents Adrift, — Runciman's History of the Crusades volume two, where's one and three. Greek Tragedy? Travels in Arabia Deserta? And here's your man with the grasshoppers isn't it… he pulled the Selected Poetry down and blew dust from it, — you've got everything mixed up here. It's like the inside of your head, you know that? and he thrust it back unopened. — four drinks and you'd start on the grasshoppers making merry in the…
— No no no, no it's the little people Lester, The little people making merry like grasshoppers In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking Backward but never forward, and if they somehow Take hold upon…
— Look. You've got a Bible here.
— Foolishly reduplicating Folly in thirty-year periods; they eat and laugh too, Groan against labors, wars and…
— What's the Bible doing here. It's in here upside down. What's it doing upside down.
— Maybe it tripped over Doughty, read it. Take it with you and…
— I've read it. He pulled it out to right it, — it's got no business here, you know that? You've got no business with the Bible.
— Always get it right don't you, came through a fresh billow of smoke. — That hat has no business on the bed, these chickens have no business in the parlour like you having business with…
— Don't start all that.
— You were what, thirteen? when you were ordained? Signed up for two years over there in your cheap suit when you were twenty? Up there in the Luwero Triangle restoring the Ten Tribes of Israel, firing up the Bagandas for the Second Coming someplace in Missouri with your moronic angel and the golden plates he'd hidden in a…
— I said don't start that! We, we've heard it we've heard it before, the same harangues, the same raving, ranting…
— No no no, no it's history Lester, five hundred years of it, your Portuguese sailing into Mombasa plundering the whole east coast, ivory, copper, silver, the gold mines spreading the true faith right up the Zambezi valley slave trading all the way? the whole damned nightmare sanctified by a Papal Bull good God, isn't that what you'd call having business with the Bible? So damned busy picking through my books find that one, Christianizing the Bakongo kingdom in the fifteenth century read it, take it and read it it's up there on the next shelf, baptizing Nzinga dressing him up in European clothes teaching him manners till he finally figures out they're selling his whole damned population to the plantations in Brazil and they…
— You ever think what your lungs look like inside, Mc-Candless? Look at this. Will you look at this? He'd turned reaching through the drift of smoke to snap on the shadeless lamp rearing from the litter at the end of the table, coming away dangling a black length of cobweb — just touch it, feel it, that's what they'd feel like, that's what they look like… The thing stuck to his fingers and he bent down for the short sleeve of the zebra hide's foreleg wiping his hands on it. — I thought some doctor told you you were at the end of the line, that's what we thought happened when we lost track of you but you always know better don't you, you're always smarter than everybody else they're all just grasshoppers, aren't they, like this… as though it were what he'd been looking for, bringing down a book in a yellow jacket — it even looks cheap, even the title, even this name you made up you wrote it under.
— It's a name isn't it? Look in the phone book. It's just not mine.
— You make money on it?
— That's not why I wrote it.
— That's not what I asked you. It's rotten you know that? He'd cracked the spine, spreading its pages — picking his nose, listen to this. Picking his nose in the back seat of the mud spattered Mercedes, Slyke hunched down in the darkness watching them carry the body back to that's me isn't it. Slyke, that's supposed to be me? You never saw me pick my nose here, here's the only good thing in it up at the top of this chapter, where it says the fool is more dangerous than the rogue because the rogue at least takes a rest sometimes, the fool never, you know why it's good? Because you didn't write it, why didn't you write it.
— Because Anatole France wrote it before you were born, says it right there doesn't it?
— You never saw me pick my nose. It's disgusting, you know that McCandless? Why did you want to give him a name like Slyke. Why did you write it.
— I was bored.
— You were always bored. You were bored the first time I met you, you thought I wouldn't read it? You've got Cruikshank in here as this character Riddle, you thought he and Solant and the rest of them wouldn't know who wrote it?
— You think I even thought they'd read it? got better things to do haven't they? Forging passports, tapping tele…
— You think it didn't show up in his briefings? They read everything down there, funny papers everything even trash like this. Maybe they thought you're trying to get back at them.
— You think I'd waste the…
— Maybe they think you're where these leaks are coming from.