One morning—he had not seen her for about a fortnight—he woke in his hermit’s cell at “The White Visitation” with a hardon, scratchy eyelids and a long pale brown hair tangled in his mouth. It wasn’t one of his own hairs. It wasn’t anybody’s he could think of but Jessica’s. But it couldn’t be—he hadn’t seen her. He sniffled a couple of times, then sneezed. Morning developed out the window. His right canine ached. He unreeled the long hair, beaded with saliva, tooth-tartar, mouth-breather’s morning fur, and stared at it. How’d it get here? Eerie, dearie. A bit of the je ne sais quoi de sinistre, all right. He had to piss. Shuffling to the lavatory, his graying government flannel tucked limply inside the cord of his pajamas, it came to him: what if it’s some mauve turn-of-the-century tale of ghostly revenge and this hair here’s some First Step… Oh, paranoia? You should’ve seen him going through all the combinations as he moved around doing lavatory things among the stumbling, farting, razor-scraping, hacking, sneezing and snot-crusted inmates of Psi Section. Only later in this did he even begin to think of Jessica—of her safety. Thoughtful Roger. What if, if she’d died in the night, an accident at the magazines… with this hair the only good-by her ghostly love had been able to push back through to this side, to the only one who’d ever mattered… . Some spider-statistician: his eyes had actually filled with tears before the Next Idea—oh. Oboy. Turn off that faucet, Dorset, and get hep to this. He stood, half-stooped, over the washbasin, paralyzed, putting his worry for Jessica on Hold for a bit, wanting very much to look back over his shoulder, even into the, the old mirror, you know, see what they’re up to, but too frozen to risk even that… now … oh yes a most superb possibility has found seedbed in his brain, and here it is. What if they are all, all these Psi Section freaks here, ganged up on him in secret? O.K.? Yes: suppose they can see into your mind! a-and how about—what if it’s hypnotism? Eh? Jesus: then a whole number of other occult things such as: astral projection, brain control (nothing occult about that), secret curses for impotence, boils, madness, yaaahhh—potions! (as he straightens at last and back in his mind’s eyes to his office now glances, very gingerly, at the coffee mess, oh God …), psychic-unity-with-the-Controlling-Agency such that Roger would be he and he Roger, yes yes a number of these notions rambling through his mind here, none of them really pleasant, either—especially inside this staff latrine, with Gavin Trefoil’s face this morning colored bright magenta, a clover blossom flashing in the wind, Ronald Cherrycoke hawking fine-marbled amber phlegm into the basin—what’s all this, who are all these people… . Freaks! Freeeeaks! He’s surrounded! they’ve been out there night and day all the war long tapping his brain, telepaths, witches, Satanic operators of all descriptions tuning in on everything—even when he and Jessica are in bed fucking—