Fine crew this is, getting set to go off after the Radiant—say what? what’s Slothrop’s own gift and Fatal Flaw? Aw, c’mon—uh, the Radiant Hour, collecting their equipment, Myrtle zooming to and fro materializing this and that:

The Golden Gate Bridge (“How about that one?” “Uh, let’s see the other one, again? with the, you know, uh…” “The Brooklyn?” “—kind of old-fashioned looking—” “The Brooklyn Bridge?” “Yeah, that’s it, with the pointed… whatever they are…”).

The Brooklyn Bridge (“See, for a chase-scene, Myrtle, we ought to observe proportions—” “Do tell.” “Now if we were gonna be in highspeed automobiles, well, sure, we might use the Golden Gate… but for zooming through the air now, we need something older, more intimate, human—”).

A pair of superlatively elegant Rolls Royces (“Quit fooling, Myrtle, we already agreed, didn’t we? No automobiles…”).

A small plastic baby’s steering wheel (“Aw all right, I know you don’t respect me as a leader but listen can’t we be reasonable…”).

Any wonder it’s hard to feel much confidence in these idiots as they go up against Pernicious Pop each day? There’s no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made—at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all-round assholery. This is less a fighting team than nest full of snits, blues, crotchets and grudges, not a rare or fabled bird in the lot. Its survival seems, after all, only a mutter of blind fortune groping through the heavy marbling of skies one Titanic-Night at a time. Which is why Slothrop now observes his coalition with hopes for success and hopes for disaster about equally high (and no, that doesn’t cancel out to apathy—it makes a loud dissonance that dovetails inside you sharp as knives). It does annoy him that he can be so divided, so perfectly unable to come down on one side or another. Those whom the old Puritan sermons denounced as “the glozing neuters of the world” have no easy road to haul down, Wear-the-Pantsers, just cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there! Energy inside is just as real, just as binding and inescapable, as energy that shows. When’s the last time you felt intensely lukewarm? eh? Glozing neuters are just as human as heroes and villains. In many ways they have the most grief to put up with, don’t they? Why don’t you, right now, wherever you are, city folks or out in the country, snuggled in quilts or riding the bus, just turn to the Glozing Neuter nearest you, even your own reflection in the mirror, and… just… sing,

How-dy neighbor, how-dy pard!

Ain’t it lone-ly, say ain’t it hard,

Passin’ by so silent, day-after-day, with-out, even a smile-or, a friendly word to say? Oh, let me

Tell ya bud-dy, tell ya ace,

Things’re fal-lin’, on their face—

Maybe we should stick together part o’ the way, and

Skies’ll be bright-er some day!

Now ev’rybody—

As the 4 suit up, voices continue singing for a while, depending how much each one happens to care—Myrtle displaying generous expanses of nifty gam, and Maximilian leering up beneath the fast-talking young tomato’s skirts, drawing bewildered giggles from adolescent Marcel, who may be a bit repressed.