Because it seems a while back that they did meet again, by the reedy edge of a marsh south of the capital. Unshaven, sweating, stinking Rocketman restlessly tripping out to the suburbs, among his people: there is haze over the sun, and a rotting swamp odor worse than Slothrop’s own. Only two or three hours’ sleep in the last couple of days. He stumbles on the Schwarzkommando, busy dredging for pieces of rocket. Formations of dark birds are cruising in the sky. The Africans have a partisan look: pieces here and there of old Wehrmacht and SS uniform, tattered civilian clothes, only one insigne in common, worn wherever it will show, a painted steel device in red, white and blue, thus:

Adapted from insignia the German troopers wore in South-West Africa when they came in 1904 to crush the Herero Rebellion—it was used to pin up half the brim of a wide-awake hat. For the Zone-Hereros it has become something deep, Slothrop gathers, maybe a little mystical. Though he recognizes the letters—Klar, Entlüftung, Zündung, Vorstufe, Hauptstufe, the five positions of the launching switch in the A4 control car—he doesn’t let on to Enzian.

They sit on a hillside eating bread and sausages. Children from the town move by in every direction. Someone has set up an army tent, someone has brought beer in kegs. A scratch band, a dozen brasses in tasseled, frayed gold and red uniforms play selections from Der Meistersinger. Fat-smoke drifts in the air. Choruses of drinkers in the distance break from time to time into laughter or a song. It’s a Rocket-raising: a festival new to this country. Soon it will come to the folk-attention how close Wernher von Braun’s birthday is to the Spring Equinox, and the same German impulse that once rolled flower-boats through the towns and staged mock battles between young Spring and deathwhite old Winter will be erecting strange floral towers out in the clearings and meadows, and the young scientist-surrogate will be going round and round with old Gravity or some such buffoon, and the children will be tickled, and laugh….

Schwarzkommando struggle knee-deep in mud, engaged entirely with the salvage, with the moment. The A4 they’re about to uncover was used in the last desperate battle for Berlin—an abortive firing, a warhead that didn’t explode. Around its grave they’re driving in planks for shoring, sending back mud in buckets and wood casks along a human chain to be dumped on shore, near where their rifles and kits are stacked.

“So Marvy was right. They didn’t disarm you guys.”

“They didn’t know where to find us. We were a surprise. There are even now powerful factions in Paris who don’t believe we exist. And most of the time I’m not so sure myself.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, I think we’re here, but only in a statistical way. Something like that rock over there is just about 100% certain—it knows it’s there, so does everybody else. But our own chances of being right here right now are only a little better than even—the slightest shift in the probabilities and we’re gone—schnapp! like that.”