So—Thanatz is out by the gasworks, up against a tar wall, mackerel eyes bulging out of wet wool collar-shadows, all black and white, really scared, breath smoking out corners of his mouth as green dawn begins to grow back among the gassen. He won’t be here, he’s only dead only dead? Isn’t this an “interface” here? a meeting surface for two worlds… sure, but which two? There’s no counting on any positivism to save him, that didn’t even work back in Berlin, before the War, at Peter Sachsa’s sittings… it only got in the way, made others impatient with him. A screen of words between himself and the numinous was always just a tactic… it never let him feel any freer. These days there’s even less point to it. He knows Blicero exists.

It wasn’t a dream. Don’t you wish it could be. Another fever that sooner or later will break, releasing you into the cool reality of a room… you don’t have to perform that long and complicated mission after all, no, you see it was only the fever… it wasn’t real… .

This time it is real, Blicero, alive or dead, is real. Thanatz, a little crazy now with fear, wants to go provoke him, he can’t wait any more, he has to see what it will take to get Blicero across the interface. What screaming ass-wiggling surrender might bring him back… .

All it brings is the Russian police. There’s a working agreement about staying inside the limits of the 175-Stadt that of course no one told Thanatz about. The gasworks used to be a notorious hustling spot till the Russians made a series of mass busts. A last fading echo of the 175-Stadt Chorale goes skipping away down the road singing some horrible salute to faggotry such as

Yumsy-numsy ’n’ poopsie-poo,

If I’m a degenerate, so are you… .

“Nowadays all we get are you tourists,” sez the natty civilian with the white handkerchief in his breast-pocket, snickering in the shadow of his hat brim. “And, of course, the odd spy.”

“Not me,” Thanatz sez.

“Not you, eh? Tell me about it.”

Something of a quandary, all right. In less than half a day, Thanatz has moved from no need to worry or even think about Blicero, to always needing some formulation of him at hand to please any stray curious cop. This is one of his earlier lessons in being preterite: he won’t escape any of the consequences he sets up for himself now, not unless it’s by accident.

For example, at the outskirts of Stettin, by accident, a Polish guerrilla group, just arrived back from London, mistakes the police car for one transporting an anti-Lublin journalist to prison, shoots out the tires, roars in, kills the driver, wounds the civilian interrogator, and escapes lugging Thanatz like a sack of potatoes.

“Not me,” Thanatz sez.

“Shit. He’s right.”

They roll him out the car door into a DP encampment a few miles farther on. He is herded into a wire enclosure along with 1,999 others being sent west to Berlin.