How probable is the Anubis in this estuary tonight? Its schedule has lapsed, fashionably, unavoidably: it should have been through Swinemünde weeks ago, but the Vistula was under Soviet interdiction to the white ship. The Russians even had a guard posted on board for a while, till the Anubian ladies vamped them off long enough to single up all lines—and so the last long reprise of Polish homeland was on, across these water-meadows of the north, radio messages following them in clear one day and code the next, an early and shapeless situation, dithering between executioner’s silence and the Big Time. There are international reasons for an Anubis Affair right now, and also reasons against, and the arguments go on, too remote to gather, and orders are changed hour to hour.

Pitching and rolling furiously, the Anubis drives northward. Lightning flickers all around the horizon, and thunder that reminds the military men on board of drumfire announcing battles they’re not sure now if they survived or still dream, still can wake up into and die…. Weather decks shine slick and bare. Party litter clogs the drains. Stale fat-smoke goes oozing out the galley porthole into the rain. The saloon’s been set up for baccarat, and filthy movies are showing in the boiler room. The second dog watch is about to come on. The white ship settles, like the soul of a kerosene lamp just lit, into its evening routine.

Partygoers stagger fore and aft, evening clothes decorated with sunbursts of vomit. Ladies lie out in the rain, nipples erect and heaving under drenched silk. Stewards skid along the decks with salvers of Dramamine and bicarbonate. Barfing aristocracy sag all down the life-lines. Here comes Slothrop now, down a ladder to the main deck, bounced by the rolling off of alternate manropes, feeling none too keen. He’s lost Bianca. Gone fussing through the ship doubling back again and again, can’t find her any more than his reason for leaving her this morning.

It matters, but how much? Now that Margherita has wept to him, across the stringless lyre and bitter chasm of a ship’s toilet, of her last days with Blicero, he knows as well as he has to that it’s the S-Gerät after all that’s following him, it and the pale plastic ubiquity of Laszlo Jamf. That if he’s been seeker and sought, well, he’s also baited, and bait. The Imipolex question was planted for him by somebody, back at the Casino Hermann Goering, with hopes it would flower into a full Imipolectique with its own potency in the Zone—but They knew Slothrop would jump for it. Looks like there are sub-Slothrop needs They know about, and he doesn’t: this is humiliating on the face of it, but now there’s also the even more annoying question, What do I need that badly?