Something comes flapping in out of the sky: talons scrabble along the top of the canopy. “What’s that?” half awake and she’s got the covers again, c’mon Geli… .

“My owl,” sez Geli. “Wernher. There’s a candy bar in the top drawer of the chiffonier, Liebchen, would you mind feeding him?”

Liebchen indeed. Staggering off the bed, vertical for the first time all day, Slothrop removes a Baby Ruth from its wrapper, clears his throat, decides not to ask her how she came by it because he knows, and lobs the thing up on the canopy for that Wernher. Soon, lying together again, they hear peanuts crunching, and a clacking beak.

“Candy bars,” Slothrop grouches. “What’s the matter with him? Don’t you know he’s supposed to be out foraging, for live mice or some shit? You’ve turned him into a house owl.”

“You’re pretty lazy yourself.” Baby fingers creeping down along his ribs.

“Well—I bet—cut it out—I bet that Tchitcherine doesn’t have to get up and feed that owl.”

She cools, the hand stopping where it is. “He loves Tchitcherine. He never comes to be fed, unless Tchitcherine’s here.”

Slothrop’s turn to cool. More correctly, freeze. “Uh, but, you don’t mean that Tchitcherine is actually, uh…”

“He was supposed to be,” sighing.

“Oh. When?”

“This morning. He’s late. It happens.”

Slothrop’s off the bed halfway across the room with a softoff, one sock on and the other in his teeth, head through one armhole of his undershirt, fly zipper jammed, yelling shit.

“My brave Englishman,” she drawls.

“Why didn’t you bring this up earlier, Geli, huh?”

“Oh, come back. It’s nighttime, he’s with a woman someplace. He can’t sleep alone.”

“I hope you can.”

“Hush. Come here. You can’t go out with nothing on your feet. I’ll give you a pair of his old boots and tell you all his secrets.”

“Secrets?” Look out, Slothrop. “Why should I want to know—”

“You’re not a war correspondent.”

“Why does everybody keep saying that? Nobody believes me. Of course I’m a war correspondent.” Shaking the brassard at her. “Can’t you read? Sez ‘War Correspondent.’ I even have a mustache, here, don’t I? Just like that Ernest Hemingway.”

“Oh. Then I imagine you wouldn’t be looking for Rocket Number 00000 after all. It was just a silly idea I had. I’m sorry.”

Oh boy, am I gonna get out of here, sez Slothrop to himself, this is a badger game if I ever saw one, man. Who else would be interested in the one rocket out of 6000 that carried the Imipolex G device?

“And you couldn’t care less about the Schwarzgerät, either,” she keeps on. She keeps on.

“The what?”

“They also called it S-Gerät.”

Next higher assembly, Slothrop, remember? Wernher, up on the canopy, is hooting. A signal to that Tchitcherine, no doubt.

Paranoids are not paranoids (Proverb 5) because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

“Now how on earth,” elaborately uncorking a fresh bottle of Nordhäuser Schattensaft, thoppp, best Cary Grant imitation he can summon up with bowels so echoing tight, suavely refilling glasses, handing one to her, “would a sweet, young, thing, like you, know anything, about rocket, hahd-weah?”