“That Radiant Hour’s probably light-years away by now,” sez Myrt, “and you have a snot icicle hanging outa your nose.” Marcel springs to the controls of the mobile building, keys in to Central Control a request for omnidirectional top-speed clearance, which sometimes comes through and sometimes not, depending on a secret process among the granters of permission, a process it is one of the 4’s ongoing mandates to discover and impart to the world. This time they get Slow Crawl, Suburban Vectors, lowest traffic status in the Raketen-Stadt, invoked only once in recorded history, against a homosexual child-murdering Indian liked to wipe off his organ afterwards on the Flag and so on—“Shit!” hollers Maximilian at Slothrop, “Slow Crawl, Suburban Vectors! whut th’ fuck we s’posed to do man, swim or some shit?”

“Uh, Myrtle…” Slothrop approaches gold-snooded M.M. a little deferent, “uh, do you think you could…” Jesus they run through this same routine every time—doesn’t Myrtle wish Sniveling Slothrop would cut this wishy-washy malarkey ’n’ be a man fer once! She lights a cigarette, lets it droop from one corner of her mouth, juts out the opposite hip and sighs, “On the beam,” exasperated already with this creep—

And Los! the miracle is done, they’re now zipping along the corridor-streets of the Raketen-Stadt like some long-necked sea monster. Little kids boil up like ants on the webby arches of viaducts high over the city dripping stone like Spanish moss petrified in mid-collapse, kids up over the airy railings and onto the friendly back of the sleek city-cruising monster. They climb window to window, too full of grace ever to fall. Some of them, naturally, are spies: that honey-curled little cutie in the blue checked pinafore and blue knee-socks, up there under the gargoyle at the window listening in to Maximilian, who began drinking heavily as soon as the building started to move, and is now carrying on a long denunciation of Marcel under the thin scholarly disguise of trying to determine if the Gallic Genius can truly be said to have any “soul.” Young lady under gargoyle is taking it all down in shorthand. These are valuable data for the psychological warfare effort.