But they will see. Rathenau—according to the histories—was prophet and architect of the cartelized state. From what began as a tiny bureau at the War Office in Berlin, he had coordinated Germany’s economy during the World War, controlling supplies, quotas and prices, cutting across and demolishing the barriers of secrecy and property that separated firm from firm—a corporate Bismarck, before whose power no account book was too privileged, no agreement too clandestine. His father Emil Rathenau had founded AEG, the German General Electric Company, but young Walter was more than another industrial heir—he was a philosopher with a vision of the postwar State. He saw the war in progress as a world revolution, out of which would rise neither Red communism nor an unhindered Right, but a rational structure in which business would be the true, the rightful authority—a structure based, not surprisingly, on the one he’d engineered in Germany for fighting the World War.

Thus the official version. Grandiose enough. But Generaldirektor Smaragd and colleagues are not here to be told what even the masses believe. It might almost—if one were paranoid enough—seem to be a collaboration here, between both sides of the Wall, matter and spirit. What is it they know that the powerless do not? What terrible structure behind the appearances of diversity and enterprise?

Gallows humor. A damned parlor game. Smaragd cannot really believe in any of this, Smaragd the technician and manager. He may only want signs, omens, confirmations of what’s already in being, something to giggle over among the Herrenklub—“We even have the Jew’s blessing!” Whatever comes through the medium tonight they will warp, they will edit, into a blessing. It is contempt of a rare order.

Leni finds a couch in a quiet corner of a room full of Chinese ivory and silk hangings, lies on it, one calf dangling, and tries to relax. Franz now will be home from the rocket-field, blinking under the bulb as Frau Silberschlag next door delivers Leni’s last message. Messages tonight, borne on the lights of Berlin… neon, incandescent, stellar… messages weave into a net of information that no one can escape… .

“The path is clear,” a voice moving Sachsa’s lips and rigid white throat. “You are constrained, over there, to follow it in time, one step after another. But here it’s possible to see the whole shape at once—not for me, I’m not that far along—but many know it as a clear presence… ‘shape’ isn’t really the right word… . Let me be honest with you. I’m finding it harder to put myself in your shoes. Problems you may be having, even those of global implication, seem to many of us here only trivial side-trips. You are off on a winding and difficult road, which you conceive to be wide and straight, an Autobahn you can travel at your ease. Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real is illusion? I don’t know whether you’ll listen, or ignore it. You only want to know about your path, your Autobahn.