"Psychology," Saul pronounced gravely. "The suspect was a procurer. That's a definite psychological type, just as a safecracker, a bank robber, a child molester, and a policeman are definite types. I tried to think and feel like a procurer. What would such a man do with the whole government looking for him? Attempt an escape to Mexico or somewhere else? Never-that's a bank-robber reaction. Procurers are not people who take risks or make bold moves against the odds. What would a procurer do? He would look for a hole to hide in."
"The FBI crime lab definitely confirms that the man Inspector Goodman found is the missing plague-carrier, Carmel," the interviewer threw in. (He had orders to repeat this every two minutes.) "Tell me, Inspector, why wouldn't such a man hide in, say, an empty house, or a secluded cabin in the mountains?"
"He wouldn't travel far," Saul explained. "He'd be too paranoid- seeing police officers everywhere he went. And his imagination would vastly exaggerate the actual power of the government. There is only one law enforcement agent to each four hundred citizens in this country, but he would imagine the proportion reversed. The most secluded cabin would be too nerve-wracking for him. He'd imagine hordes of National Guardsmen and law officers of all sorts searching every square foot of woods in America. He really would. Procurers are very ordinary men, compared to hardened criminals. They think like ordinary people in most ways. The ordinary man and woman never commits a crime because they have the same exaggerated idea of our omnipotence." Saul's tone was neutral, descriptive, but in New York Rebecca's heart skipped a beat: This was the new Saul talking, the one who was no longer on the side of law and order.
"So you just asked yourself, where's a good-sized hole near Las Vegas?"
"That was all there was to it, yes."
"The American people will certainly be grateful to you. And how did it happen that you got involved in this case? You're with the New York Police Department, aren't you?"
How will he answer that one? Rebecca wondered; just then the phone rang.
Turning down the TV sound, she lifted the phone and said, "Yes?"
"I can tell by your voice you're the kind of woman who fully meets the criteria of my value system," said August Personage. "I want to lick your ass and your pussy and have you piss on me and-"
"Well, that's a most amazing story, Inspector Goodman," the interviewer was saying. Oh, hell, Rebecca thought. Saul's expression was so sincere that she knew he had just told one of the most outrageous lies of his life.
The phone rang again. With a pounce Rebecca grabbed it and snouted, "Listen, you creep, if you keep calling me-"
"That's no way to talk to a man who just saved the world," Saul's voice said mildly.
"Saul! But you're on television-"
"They videotaped that a half-hour ago. I'm at the Las Vegas Airport, about to take a jet to Washington. I'm having a conference with the President"
"My God. What are you going to tell him?"
"As much," Saul pronounced, "as an asshole like him can understand."
(In Los Angeles, Dr. Vulcan Troll watched the seismograph move upward to Grade 2. That still wasn't serious, but he scratched a note to the graduate student who would soon be replacing him. "If this jumps to 3, call me at my house." Then he drove home, passing Dillinger's bungalow, humming happily, thankful that the rioting was ending and the Guard being withdrawn. At the lab the graduate student, reading a paperback titled Carnal Orgy, didn't notice when the graph jumped past 3 and hit 4.)
Danny Pricefixer, waking in Ingolstadt, glanced at his wristwatch. Noon. My God, he thought; sleeping so late was a major sin in his system of morality. Then he remembered a little of last night, and smiled contentedly, turning in the bed to kiss Lady Velkor's neck. A huge black arm hung over the other shoulder, and a black hand, limp in sleep, held her breast. "My God!" Danny said out loud, remembering more, as Clark Kent sat up groggily and stared at him.
("Smiling Jim" Treponema, at that moment, was navigating a very dangerous pass in the mountains of Northern California. Strapped to his back was a 6mm Remington Model 700 Bolt Action rifle with 6-power Bushnell telescope; a canteen of whiskey was hooked to one side of his belt, and a canteen of water to the other. He was perspiring from labor, in spite of the altitude, but he was one of the few happy people in the country, since he had been nowhere near a radio for three days and had missed the whole terror connected with Anthrax Leprosy Pi plague, the declaration of martial law, and the rioting and bombings. He was on his yearly vacation, free from the sewer of smut in which he was submerged forty-nine weeks of the year- the foulness and filth in which he heroically struggled daily, risking his soul for the good of his fellow citizens- and he was breathing clean air and thinking clean thoughts. Specifically, as an avid hunter, he had read that only one American eagle still survived, and he was determined to be immortalized in hunting literature as the man who killed it. He knew well, of course, how ecologists and conservation-ists would regard that achievement, but their opinions didn't bother him. A bunch of fags, commies, and smut-nuts: That was his estimate of those bleeding-heart types. Probably smoked dope, too. Not a man's man among them. He shifted his rifle, which was pressing his sweat-soaked shirt uncomfortably, and climbed onward and upward.)
Mama Sutra stared at the central Tarot card in the Tree of Life: It was The Fool.
"Pardon me," the little Italian tree said.
"This is getting ridiculous," Fission Chips muttered. "I don't intend to spend the rest of my life in conversation with trees."
"I'm a tree worth talking to," the dark-skinned tree with her hair in a bun persisted.
He squinted. "I know what you are," he said finally, "half tree and half woman. Ergo, a dryad. Benefit of classical education."
"Very good," said the dryad. "But when you stop tripping, you're going to crash. You'll remember London and your job, and you'll wonder how you're going to explain the last month to them."
"Somebody stole a month from me," Chips agreed pleasantly. "A cynical old swine named the Dealy Lama. Or another feller named Toad. Bad lot. Shouldn't go around stealing months."
The tree handed him an envelope. "Try not to lose that," she said. "It'll make everybody in your office so happy that they'll accept any story you make up to explain how it took you a month to get it."
"What is it?"
"The name of every BUGGER agent in the British government. Together with the false names they use for the bank accounts where they keep all the money they can't account for. And the account numbers and the names of the banks, too. In one nice package. All it needs is a red ribbon."
"I think my leg is being pulled again," said Chips. But he was coming down, and he opened the envelope and peered at the contents. "This is real?" he asked.
"They won't be able to account for the money," the tree assured him. "Some very interesting confessions will be obtained."
"Who the devil are you?" Chips asked, seeing a teen-age Italian girl and not a tree.
"I'm your holy guardian angel," she said.
"You look like an angel," Chips admitted grudgingly, "but I don't believe any of this. Time travel, talking trees, giant toads, none of it. Somebody slipped me a drug."
"Yes, somebody slipped you a drug. But I'm your holy guardian angel, and I'm slipping you this envelope, and it'll make everything all right back in London. All you have to do is make up a halfway reasonable lie…"
"I was held prisoner in a BUGGER dungeon with a beautiful Eurasian love-slave," Chips began improvising.
"Very good," she said. "They won't believe it, but they'll think you believe it. That's good enough."