But the only people—if any—apt to be communicating these days on 28,000 meters (the distance from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde to the Hafenstraße in Greifswald, where Slothrop in early August may see a particular newspaper photo), except for freak Argentine anarchists, are the undenazified Nazis still wandering around in unaccounted-for submarines holding their own secret shipboard tribunals against enemies of the Reich. So the closest thing in the Zone to an early Christian is put on to listen for news of unauthorized crucifixions.

“Someone the other night was dying,” Rohr tells him, “I don’t know if he was inside the Zone or out at sea. He wanted a priest. Should I have got on and told him about priests? Would he’ve found any comfort in that? It’s so painful sometimes. We’re really trying to be Christians… .”

“My folks were Congregationalist,” Slothrop offers, “I think.” It’s getting harder to remember either of them, as Broderick progresses into Pernicious Pop and Nalline into ssshhhghhh… (into what? What was that word? Whatever it is, the harder he chases, the faster it goes away).

MOM SLOTHROP’S LETTER TO AMBASSADOR KENNEDY

Well hi Joe how’ve ya been. Listen: Jew-zeppy—we’re getting edgy about our youngest again. Would you try bothering a few of those jolly old London connections just once more? (Promise!!) Even if it’s old news it’ll be good news for Poppy and I. I still remember what you said when the awful word about the PT boat came in, before you knew how Jack was. I’ll never forget your words then. It’s every parent’s dream, Joe, that it is.

Oh, and Hozay (whoops, don’t mind that, the pen just skidded as you can see! Naughty Nalline’s on her third martini, we’ll have you know). Poppy and I heard your wonderful speech at the GE plant over in Pittsfield the other week. You’re in the groove, Mister K! How true! we’ve got to modernize in Massachusetts, or it’ll just keep getting worse and worse. They’re supposed to be taking a strike vote here next week. Wasn’t the WLB set up to prevent just that? It isn’t starting to break down, is it, Joe? Sometimes, you know these fine Boston Sundays, when the sky over the Hill is broken into clouds, the way white bread appears through a crust you hold at your thumbs and split apart… . You know, don’t you? Golden clouds? Sometimes I think—ah, Joe, I think they’re pieces of the Heavenly City falling down. I’m sorry—didn’t mean this to get so gloomy all so sudden, it’s just… but it isn’t beginning to fall apart, is it, my old fellow Harvard-parent? Sometimes things aren’t very clear, that’s all. Things look like they’re going against us, and though it always turns out fine at the end, and we can always look back and say oh of course it had to happen that way, otherwise so-and-so wouldn’t have happened—still, while it’s happening, in my heart I keep getting this terrible fear, this empty place, and it’s very hard at such times really to believe in a Plan with a shape bigger than I can see… .