“But will it ever get us, Jeremy, you and me, that’s the quesshun….” Mexico has been uttering these oracular—often, as at the Club today for lunch, quite embarrassing—bits of his ever since he showed up.

“Er, will what ever get me, old chap?” It’s been old chap all day.

“Haven’t—ch’ever felt something wanted to gesh you, Jeremy?”

“Get me.” He’s drunk. He’s insane. I obviously can’t let him near Jessica these math chaps they’re like oboe players it affects the brain or something….

Aha, but, once a month, Jeremy, even Jeremy, dreams: about a gambling debt… different sorts of Collectors keep arriving… he cannot remember the debt, the opponent he lost to, even the game. He senses a great organization behind these emissaries. Its threats are always left open, left for Jeremy to complete… each time, terror has come welling up through the gap, crystal terror….

Good, good. The other sure-fire calibration test has already been sprung on Jeremy—at a prearranged spot in a park, two unemployed Augustes leap out in whiteface and working-clothes, and commence belting each other with gigantic (7 or 8 feet long) foam rubber penises, cunningly detailed, all in natural color. These phancy phalli have proven to be a good investment. Roger and Seaman Bodine (when he’s in town) have outdrawn the ENSA shows. It is a fine source of spare change—multitudes will gather at the edges of these north German villages to watch the two zanies whack away. Granaries, mostly empty, poke up above the rooftops now and then, stretching a wood gallows-arm against the afternoon sky. Soldiers, civilians, and children. There is a lot of laughter.

Seems people can be reminded of Titans and Fathers, and laugh. It isn’t as funny as a pie in the face, but it’s at least as pure.

Yes, giant rubber cocks are here to stay as part of the arsenal….

What Jessica said—hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them—was: “We’re going to be married. We’re trying very hard to have a baby.”

All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. “I don’t care. Have his baby. I’ll love you both—just come with me Jess, please… I need you….”

She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. “Security.” Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office with a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons.

“Jess—” shit is he going to cry? he can feel it building like an orgasm—