Springer is nowhere in sight, and from what Slothrop can gather from random questioning won’t be by till later, if at all. Now this happens to be the very delivery date for that discharge they arranged sailing in with Frau Gnahb to Stralsund. And tonight, of all nights, after a week of not bothering him, the police decide to come after Slothrop. Oh yes, yes indeed NNNNNNNN Good Evening Tyrone Slothrop We Have Been Waiting For You. Of Course We Are Here. You Didn’t Think We Had Just Faded Away, No, No Tyrone, We Must Hurt You Again If You Are Going To Be That Stupid, Hurt You Again And Again Yes Tyrone You Are So Hopeless So Stupid And Doomed. Are You Really Supposed To Find Anything? What If It Is Death Tyrone? What If We Don’t Want You To Find Anything? If We Don’t Want To Give You Your Discharge You’ll Just Go On Like This Forever Won’t You? Maybe We Want You Only To Keep On. You Don’t Know Do You Tyrone. What Makes You Think You Can Play As Well As We Can? You Can’t. You Think You’re Good But You’re Really Shit And We All Know It. That Is In Your Dossier. (Laughter. Humming.)

Bodine finds him sitting inside a coat closet, chewing on a velvet ear of his mask. “You look bad, Rocky. This is Solange. She’s a masseuse.” She is smiling, quizzical, a child brought to visit the weird pig in his cave.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Let me take you down to the baths,” the woman’s voice a soapy sponge already caressing at his troubles, “it’s very quiet, restful… .”

“I’ll be around all night,” Bodine sez. “I’ll tell you if Springer shows.”

“This is some kind of a plot, right?” Slothrop sucking saliva from velvet pile.

“Everything is some kind of a plot, man,” Bodine laughing.

“And yes but, the arrows are pointing all different ways,” Solange illustrating with a dance of hands, red-pointed fingervectors. Which is Slothrop’s first news, out loud, that the Zone can sustain many other plots besides those polarized upon himself… that these are the els and busses of an enormous transit system here in the Raketenstadt, more tangled even than Boston’s—and that by riding each branch the proper distance, knowing when to transfer, keeping some state of minimum grace though it might often look like he’s headed the wrong way, this network of all plots may yet carry him to freedom. He understands that he should not be so paranoid of either Bodine or Solange, but ride instead their kind underground awhile, see where it takes him… .