(b) a beam-scanning system—or several—analogous to the well-known video electron stream, modulated with grids and deflection plates located as needed on the Surface (or even below the outer layer of Imipolex, down at the interface with What lies just beneath: with What has been inserted or What has actually grown itself a skin of Imipolex G, depending which heresy you embrace. We need not dwell here on the Primary Problem, namely that everything below the plastic film does after all lie in the Region of Uncertainty, except to emphasize to beginning students who may be prone to Schwärmerei, that terms referring to the Subimipolexity such as “Core” and “Center of Internal Energy” possess, outside the theoretical, no more reality than do terms such as “Supersonic Region” or “Center of Gravity” in other areas of Science),

(c) alternatively, the projection, onto the Surface, of an electronic “image,” analogous to a motion picture. This would require a minimum of three projectors, and perhaps more. Exactly how many is shrouded in another order of uncertainty: the so-called Otyiyumbu Indeterminacy Relation (“Probable functional derangement γR resulting from physical modification ϕR (x,y,z) is directly proportional to a higher power p of sub-imipolectic derangement γB, p being not necessarily an integer and determined empirically”), in which subscript R is for Rakete, and B for Blicero.

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Meantime, Tchitcherine has found it necessary to abandon his smegma-gathering stake-out on the Argentine anarchists. The heat, alias Nikolai Ripov of the Commissariat for Intelligence Activities, is in town and closing in. The faithful Džabajev, in terror or disgust, has gone off across the cranberry bogs on a long wine binge with two local derelicts, and may never be back. Rumor sez he is cutting a swath these days across the Zone in a stolen American Special Services getup, posing as Frank Sinatra. Comes into town finds a tavern and starts crooning out on the sidewalk, pretty soon there’s a crowd, sub-deb cuties each a $65 fine and worth every penny dropping in epileptiform seizures into selfless heaps of cable-stitching, rayon pleats and Xmastree appliqué. It works. It’s always good for free wine, an embarrassment of wine, rolling Fuder and Fass in a rumbling country procession through the sandy streets, wherever the Drunkards Three find themselves. Never occurs to anybody to ask what Frank Sinatra’s doing flanked by this pair of wasted rumdums. Nobody doubts for a minute that it is Sinatra. Town hepcats usually take the other two for a comedy team.

While nobles are crying in their nights’ chains, the squires sing. The terrible politics of the Grail can never touch them. Song is the magic cape.

Tchitcherine understands that he is finally alone now. Whatever is to find him will find him alone.