Red, white, and blue winks from the dusty deck of the control car. Slothrop drops to one knee. The Schwarzkommando mandala: KEZVH. He looks up to see Marvy giving him a sly fat smile.

“Why shore. I shoulda known. You don’t have no insignia on. Sheeeee… you’re-you’re like th’ Soviet CIC! Ain’tcha.” Slothrop stares back. “Hey. Hey, who’re you tryin’ to git? Huh?” The smile vanishes. “Sa-a-a-y, I shore hope it ain’t Colonel Tchitcherine, now. He’s a good Rooskie, you know.”

“I assure you,” holding up the mandala, cross to vampire, “my only interest is in dealing with the problem of these black devils.”

Back comes the smile, along with a fat hand on Slothrop’s arm. “You all set to go round ’n’ round with thim, whin y’r comrades git here?”

“Round, and round? I am not sure that I—”

“You know. Come on. Why all thim boogies’t’s camped outside o’ town! Hey, Ivan, god-damn ’at’s goam be fun. I spint all day today cleanin’ my Colt’s,” caressing the sidearm in its holster. “Goam make me a coonskin cap outa one o’ thim ’suckers, ’n’ I don’t have to tell you what part’s goam be danglin’ down there in back, do Uh? Hah?” Which tickles Bloody Chiclitz so much he like to chokes laughing.

“Actually,” Slothrop making it up as he goes along, “my mission is coordinating intelligence,” whatever that means, “in operations such as this. I am down here, in fact, to reconnoiter the enemy position.”

“Enemy’s right,” Chiclitz nods. “They got guns and everything. Only thing a coon ought to have in his hands is a broom!”

Marvy is frowning. “You, you ain’t expecting us to go out there with you, now. We can tell you how to git there, comrade, but you’re crazy to go out there alone. Why don’tcha wait’ll tonight? Scheduled to stort about midnight, ain’t it? You can wait till then.”

“It is essential that I gather certain information in advance,” poker-face, pokerface, good, good… “I do not have to tell you how important this is…” a pregnant Lugosi pause, “to all of us.”

Well, that gets him directions out to the Schwarzkommando and a lift back into town, where the businessmen pick up a couple of those Eager Fräuleins and go roistering off into the sunset. Slothrop stands in their exhaust, muttering.

Next time it won’t be any custard pie, you asshole… .

Takes him an hour to get out to the camp on foot across a wide meadow whose color is deepening now as if green dye flowed and seeped into its nap… he is aware of each single grassblade’s shadow reaching into the shadows east of it… pure milk-colored light sweeps up in a bell-curve above the sun nearly down, transparent white flesh, fading up through many blues, powdery to dark steel at the zenith… why is he out here, doing this? Is this Ursula the lemming’s idea too, getting mixed up in other people’s private feuds when he was supposed to be… whatever it was… uh… .