“Well nobody’s,” having learned by now to live with remarks about his appearance, “called up the Girl Guides yet either, have they.”

“I’m twenty.”

“Hurrah, that qualifies you for a ride, in this Jaguar here you see, all the way to London.”

“But I’m going the other way. Nearly to Battle.”

“Oh, round trip of course.”

Shaking hair back out of her face, “Does your mother know you’re out like this.”

“My mother is the war,” declares Roger Mexico, leaning over to open the door.

“That’s a queer thing to say,” one muddy little shoe pondering on the running board.

“Come along, love, you’re holding up the mission, leave the machine where it is, mind your skirt getting in, I wouldn’t want to commit an unspeakable act out here in the streets of Tunbridge Wells—”

At which moment the rocket falls. Cute, cute. A thud, a hollow drumroll. Far enough toward the city to be safe, but close and loud enough to send her the hundred miles between herself and the stranger: long-swooping, balletic, her marvelous round bottom turning to settle in the other seat, hair in a moment’s fan, hand sweeping Army-colored skirt under graceful as a wing, all with the blast still reverberating.

He thinks he can see a solemn gnarled something, deeper or changing faster than clouds, rising to the north. Will she snuggle now cutely against him, ask him to protect her? He didn’t even believe she’d get in the car, rocket or no rocket, accordingly now puts Pointsman’s Jaguar somehow into reverse instead of low, yes, backs over the bicycle, rendering it in a great crunch useless for anything but scrap.

“I’m in your power,” she cries. “Utterly.”

“Hmm,” Roger at length finding his gear, dancing among the pedals rrrn, snarl, off to London. But Jessica’s not in his power.

And the war, well, she is Roger’s mother, she’s leached at all the soft, the vulnerable inclusions of hope and praise scattered, beneath the mica-dazzle, through Roger’s mineral, grave-marker self, washed it all moaning away on her gray tide. Six years now, always just in sight, just where he can see her. He’s forgotten his first corpse, or when he first saw someone living die. That’s how long it’s been going on. Most of his life, it seems. The city he visits nowadays is Death’s antechamber: where all the paperwork’s done, the contracts signed, the days numbered. Nothing of the grand, garden, adventurous capital his childhood knew. He’s become the Dour Young Man of “The White Visitation,” the spider hitching together his web of numbers. It’s an open secret that he doesn’t get on with the rest of his section. How can he? They’re all wild talents—clairvoyants and mad magicians, telekinetics, astral travelers, gatherers of light. Roger’s only a statistician. Never had a prophetic dream, never sent or got a telepathic message, never touched the Other World directly. If anything’s there it will show in the experimental data won’t it, in the numbers… but that’s as close or clear as he’ll ever get. Any wonder he’s a bit short with Psi Section, all the definitely 3-sigma lot up and down his basement corridor? Jesus Christ, wouldn’t you be?