SIX

‘I have never drunk alcohol before,’ Nick said as they sat facing one another across the table. He had begun to feel terribly odd. ‘You read in the papes all the time that it causes people to go berserk, to suffer complete changes of personality, suffer brain damage. In fact—’

‘Scare stories,’ Zeta said. ‘Although, it’s true you should go easy at first. Take it slow; let it just slide down.’

‘What’s the penalty for drinking alcohol?’ Nick asked. He found himself having trouble forming words.

‘A year. Mandatory, without possibility of parole.’

‘Is it worth it?’ The room, around him, seemed unreal; it had lost its substantiality, its concreteness. ‘And isn’t it habit-forming? The papes say once you start, you can never—’

‘Just drink your beer,’ Zeta said; he sipped his, downing it without apparent difficulty.

‘You know,’ Nick said, ‘what Kleo would say about my having alcohol?’

‘Wives are like that.’

‘I don’t think so. She’s like that, but some aren’t.’

‘No, they’re all that way.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Zeta said, ‘their husband is the source of all their financial money.’ He belched, grimaced, leaned back in his swivel chair, the beer bottle gripped in one large hand. ‘To them – well, look at it this way. Suppose you had a machine, a very complex delicate machine, which when it was working properly it pumped out, fed out, a line of pops. Now, supposing that machine—’

‘Is that really how wives feel about their husbands?’

‘Sure.’ Zeta burped again, handed Nick the bottle of beer.

‘It’s dehumanization,’ Nick said.

‘Sure it is. Bet your purple and green ass it is.’

‘I think Kleo worries about me because her father died when she was very young. She’s afraid all men are—’ He searched for the word but could not find it; by now his thought-processes were erratic, filmed over and peculiar. He had never experienced anything like this before, and it frightened him.

‘Just be calm,’ Zeta said.

Nick said, ‘I think Kleo is vapid.’

‘“Vapid”? What’s “vapid”?’

‘Empty.’ He gestured. ‘Maybe I mean passive.’

‘Women are supposed to be passive.’

‘But it interferes—’ He stumbled over the word and felt his face redden with embarrassment. ‘It interferes with their maturing.’

Zeta leaned toward him. ‘You’re saying all this because you’re scared of her disapproval. You say she’s “passive” and yet that’s exactly what you want, now, in regard to this. You want her to go along; I mean, approve of what you’re doing. But why tell her at all? Why does she need to know?’

‘I always tell her everything.’

‘Why?’ Zeta said loudly.

‘That’s the way it’s supposed to be,’ Nick said.

‘When we finish this beer,’ Zeta said, ‘you and I are going somewhere. I won’t say where – it’s just a place. Where, if we get lucky, we can pick up some material.’

‘You mean Under Men material?’ Nick asked, and felt coldness tug at his heart; he felt himself being steered into risky waters. ‘I already have a booklet a friend posing as a—’ He broke off, unable to construct his sentence. ‘I’m not going to take any risks.’

‘You already have.’

‘But it’s enough,’ Nick said. ‘Already. Sitting here drinking this beer and talking the way we’ve been talking.’

Zeta said, ‘There is only one “talking” that matters. The talking of Eric Cordon. The real stuff; not the forgeries that are being circulated around on the street, but what he does say, what it’s all about. I don’t want to tell you anything: I want him to tell you. In one of his booklets. I know where we can pick one up.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’m not talking about the “words of Eric Cordon”. I’m talking about the true words of Eric Cordon, his admonitions, parables, the plans, known only to those who are truly members of the world of free men. Under Men in the truest sense; the real sense.’

‘I don’t want to do anything Kleo won’t approve of,’ Nick said. ‘A husband and wife have to be honest with each other; if I go ahead with this—’

‘If she doesn’t approve, get yourself another wife who can.’

‘You mean that?’ Nick asked; his brain had become so fogged over now that he could not tell if Zeta was serious. And, if he did mean what he said, whether he was right or not. ‘You mean this could split us,’ he said.

‘It’s split a lot of marriages before. Anyhow, are you so happy with her? You said before, “She’s vapid.” Your exact words. And you said it, not me.’

‘It’s the alcohol,’ Nick said.

‘Of course it’s the alcohol. “In vino veritas,”,’ Zeta said, and grinned, showing his brownish teeth. ‘That’s Latin; it means—’

‘I know what it means,’ Nick said; he felt anger, now, but he did not know what toward. Was it toward Zeta? No, he thought, it’s Kleo. I know how she would react to this. We shouldn’t ask for trouble. We’ll wind up in a detention dome on Luna, in one of those dreadful work camps. ‘What comes first?’ he asked Zeta. ‘You’re married, too; you have a wife, and you have two children. Is your respon—’ Again his tongue failed to function properly. ‘Where’s your first loyalty? To them? Or to political action?’

‘Toward men in general,’ Zeta said. He raised his head, held the beer bottle to his lips, and finished the last of the beer. He then slammed it violently down on the table. ‘Let’s get moving,’ he said to Nick. ‘It’s like the Bible says: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”’

‘“Free”?’ Nick asked, also rising – and experiencing difficulty in doing so. ‘That’s the last thing Cordon’s booklets are going to make us. A track will get our names, find out we’re buying Cordonite writing, and then—’

‘Always looking over your shoulder for tracks,’ Zeta said scathingly. ‘How can you be alive that way? I’ve seen hundreds of people buy and sell pamphlets, sometimes a thousand pops’ worth at one time and’ – he paused – ‘sometimes the tracks do worm their way in. Or a prowl car catches sight when you’re passing over some pops to a dealer. And then, like you say, it’s in prison on Luna. But you have to take the risk. Life itself is a risk. You say to yourself, “Is it worth it?” and you answer, “Yes, it is. Goddam it, yes it is.”’ He put on his coat, opened the door of the office and stepped out into the sunlight. Nick, after an extensive pause – seeing that Zeta was not looking back – followed after him, slowly. He caught up with him at Zeta’s parked squib. ‘I think you ought to begin looking for another wife,’ Zeta said; he opened the door of the squib and squeezed his bulk in behind the tiller. Nick, getting in also, slammed the door on his side. Zeta grinned as the squib shot up into the morning sky.

‘That’s really none of your business,’ Nick said.

Zeta did not answer; he concentrated on his driving. Turning his head he said to Nick, ‘I can drive badly now, we’re clean. But on the way back we’ll have the stuff, so we won’t get a PSS occifer flagging us down for speeding or erratic turning. Right?’

‘Yes,’ Nick said, and felt the numbing fear inside him rise. It had become inevitable, the path they were following; he could not now get out of it. Why not? he asked himself. I know I have to go through with it, but why? To show that I’m not afraid that a track will burst us? To show that I’m not dominated by my wife? For all the wrong reasons, he thought… and mainly because I’ve been drinking alcohol, the most dangerous substance – short of Prussic acid – you can imbibe. Well, he thought, so be it.

‘Nice day,’ Zeta said. ‘Blue sky, no clouds to duck behind.’ He soared upward enjoying himself; Nick shrank numbly back against the seat and merely sat, helpless, as the squib oozed forward.

At a payfone, Zeta made a call; it consisted of only a few half-articulated words. ‘He’s holding?’ Zeta asked. ‘He’s there? Okay. Yeah, right. Thanks. Bye.’ He hung up. ‘That’s the part I don’t like,’ he said. ‘When you make the fonecall. All you can do is figure that so many million fonecalls are made in one given day that they can’t monitor them all.’

‘But Parkinson’s Law,’ Nick said, trying to cover his fear with jollification. ‘“If a thing can happen—“’

Zeta, getting back into the squib, said, ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

‘But eventually.’

‘Eventually,’ Zeta pointed out, ‘death will get us all.’ He cranked up the engine of the squib and they zoomed upward again. Presently, they were flying over a sprawling residential section of the city; Zeta peered down, scowling. ‘All the goddam houses look exactly alike,’ he muttered. ‘It’s so frigging hard to see from the air. But that’s good; he’s stuck right in the middle of ten million loyal believers in Willis Gram and Unusuals and New Men and all the rest of that crap.’ The squib dived suddenly. ‘Here we go,’ Zeta said. ‘You know, that beer affected me – it actually did.’ He grinned at Nick. ‘And you look like a stuffed owl; you look like you could turn your head completely around.’ He laughed.

They came to rest on a roof landing field.

Grunting, Zeta got out; Nick did so, too, and they made their way to the escalator. In a low voice, Zeta said to him, ‘If the occifers stop us and ask what we’re doing here, we say we’re bringing some guy back his squib keys which we forgot to give him when we fixed his squib.’

‘That makes no sense,’ Nick said.

‘Why doesn’t it make any sense?’

‘Because if we had his squib keys he wouldn’t have been able to fly back here.’

‘Okay, we say it’s a second set of keys he asked us to order for him, for his wife.’

At the fiftieth floor, Zeta stepped from the escalator; they made their way down a carpeted hall, seeing no one. Zeta paused all at once, briefly looked around, then knocked on a door.

The door opened. A girl stood confronting them, a small, black-haired girl, pretty in an odd, tough way; she had a pug nose, sensual lips, elegantly formed cheekbones. About her hung the glow of feminine magic; Nick caught it right away. Her smile, he thought, it lights up: it illuminates her whole face, bringing it to life.

Zeta did not seem pleased to see her. ‘Where’s Denny?’ he asked in a low but distinct voice.

‘Come in.’ She held the door aside. ‘He’s on his way.’

Looking uneasy, Zeta entered, motioning Nick to follow him. He did not introduce either of them to the other; instead he strode through the living room, into the bed-roomette, then into the kitchen area of the living room, prowling like an animal. ‘Are you clean here?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘Yes,’ the girl said. She looked up into Nick’s face, a jump of about a foot. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

‘You’re not clean,’ Zeta said; he stood reaching down into the waste tube; he came up abruptly with a package which had been taped to the inside of the tube. ‘You kids are nuts.’

‘I didn’t know it was there,’ the girl said in a sharp, hard voice. ‘Anyhow, it was fixed so that if a track busted down the door, we could flick it down the tube just by touching it, and there’d be no evidence.’

‘They plug the tube,’ Zeta said. ‘Catch it down around the second floor, before it hits the furnaces.’

‘My name’s Charley,’ the girl said to Nick.

‘A girl named Charley?’ he asked.

‘Charlotte.’ She held out her hand; they shook. ‘You know, I think I know who you are. You’re Zeta’s tire regroover.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And you want a genuine booklet? Are you paying for it or is Zeta? Because Denny isn’t going to lay out any more credit; he’ll want pops.’

‘I’m paying for it,’ Zeta said. ‘This time, anyhow.’

‘That’s how they always do it,’ Charley said. ‘The first booklet is free; the next is five pops; the next is ten; the—’

The apartment door opened. Everyone ceased moving, ceased breathing.

A pretty boy stood there, bulky, well-dressed, with tangled blond hair, large eyes, an expression of intensity constricting his face so that in spite of his prettiness he had an ugly, cruel intensity to him. He surveyed Zeta briefly, then Nick, for several silent moments. He then shut the door after him, Ferok-bar locked it, walked across the room to the window, peered out, stood chewing on the edge of his thumbnail, radiating, all about him, ominous vibrations, as if something awful, something which would destroy everything, was about to happen… as if, Nick thought, he’s going to do it. He’s going to beat up all of us himself. The boy emanated an aura of strength, but it was a sick strength; it was overripe, as were his enlarged eyes and tangled hair. A Dionysus from the gutters of the city, Nick thought. So this was the dealer. This is the person from whom we get authentic tracts.

‘I saw your squib on the roof,’ the boy said to Zeta, as if announcing the discovery of some evil act. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked, inclining his head toward Nick.

‘Someone — who I know — who wants to buy,’ Zeta said.

‘Oh, really?’ The boy, Denny, walked toward Nick, studied him at closer range. Studying his clothes, his face; judging me, Nick realized. As if some eerie kind of combat is involved, the nature of which was, to him, totally unclear.

All at once, Denny’s protruding, large eyes moved rapidly, he stared at the couchette, at the wrapped booklet lying on it.

‘I dug it out of the waste tube,’ Zeta said.

‘You little bitch,’ Denny said to the girl. ‘I told you to keep this place clean. You understand?’ He glowered down at her; she gazed up, lips half-parted anxiously, her eyes unblinking with alarm. Turning rapidly, Denny picked up the booklet, tore the wrappings from it, studied it. ‘You got this from Fred,’ he said. ‘What’d you pay for it? Ten pops? Twelve?’

‘Twelve,’ Charley said. ‘You’re paranoid. Stop looking like you think one of us is a track. You always think someone is a track if you don’t personally—’

‘What’s your name?’ Denny asked to Nick.

‘Don’t tell him,’ Charley said.

Turning to her, Denny raising his arm, drew back; she faced him calmly, her face inert and hard. ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘Hit me and I’ll kick you where it’ll hurt for the rest of your life.’

Zeta said, ‘He’s an employee of mine.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Denny said sardonically. ‘And you’ve known him all your life. Why don’t you simply say he’s your brother?’

‘It’s the truth,’ Zeta said.

‘What do you do?’ Denny asked Nick.

‘I regroove tires,’ Nick said.

Denny smiled; his entire manner changed, as if the trouble had cleared. ‘Oh, yeah?’ he asked, and laughed. ‘What a job. What a vocation. Handed down to you by your father?’

‘Yes,’ Nick said, and felt hate; it was all he could do to keep it from showing, and he wanted to keep it from showing; he felt afraid of Denny — perhaps because the others in the room were, and he was picking it up from them.

Denny held out his hand to Nick. ‘Okay, tire regroover, you want to buy a nickel or a dime booklet? I’ve got both.’ He reached inside his leather jacket and brought out a bundle of tracts. ‘This is good stuff,’ he said. ‘All authentic; I know the guy who prints them. I’ve seen Cordon’s original manuscript there in the plant.’

‘Since I’m paying for it,’ Zeta said, ‘it’ll be a nickel booklet.’

‘I suggest THE MORALS OF PROPER MAN,’ Charley said.

‘You do?’ Denny said sardonically, eyeing her. She met his gaze, as before, without flinching; Nick thought. She is as hard as he is. She is able to withstand him. But why? he wondered. Is it worth it, to be near such a violent person. Yes, he thought; I can feel the violence, and the volatility. He is apt, at any time, to do anything, any minute. He has an amphetamine personality. Probably he takes massive doses of one of the amphetamines, either orally or by injection. Or maybe, to do the job he does, he has to be this way.

‘I’ll take that one,’ Nick said. ‘The one she suggests.’

‘She’s roped you in,’ Denny said. ‘Like she ropes in everybody, every man, anyhow.’ To Nick he said, ‘She’s a stupid. She’s a stupid, short bitch.’

‘You fairy,’ Charley said.

‘The lesbian talks,’ Denny said.

Zeta got out a five-pop bill and handed it to Denny; clearly he wanted to conclude the transaction and leave.

‘Do I bother you?’ Denny asked Nick, abruptly.

He said, carefully, ‘No.’

‘Some people I bother,’ Denny said.

‘Of course you do,’ Charley said. She reached out, took the handful of booklets from him, found the proper one and handed it to Nick, smiling her illuminating smile at the same time. Sixteen, he thought; no older than that. Children playing at the game of life and death, hating and fighting, but — probably sticking together when there is trouble. The animosity between Denny and the girl masked, he decided, a deeper attraction. Somehow, they functioned in tandem. A symbiotic relationship, he conjectured; not pleasant to look on but nonetheless real. A Dionysus from the gutter, he thought, and a small, pretty, tough girl able to — or trying to — cope with him. Hating him, probably, and yet unable to leave. Probably because he is, to her, so attractive physically, and, in her eyes, a real man. Because he is tougher than she is, and that she respects. Because she herself is so tough she knows what it means.

But what a person to be melded to. Like a sticky fruit in too warm a climate, he had melted; his face was soft and molten and only the blazing glare of his eyes held his features in conformity.

I would have thought, he thought, that those distributing and selling Cordon’s writing would be idealistic, noble. But apparently not. His work is illegal; it attracts those who naturally handle illegal things, and they are a type themselves. The objects they peddle don’t in themselves matter; it is strictly the fact that they are illegal, and people will pay a good, a very good, price.

‘Are you sure this place is clean now?’ Denny asked the girl. ‘You know, I live here; I’m here ten hours a day. If they find anything here—’ He prowled about, suspicious in an animal-like way: a brooding suspiciousness, replete with hatred.

Suddenly, he picked up a floor lamp. He examined it, then got from his pocket a coin; he unscrewed three screws and the baseplate came loose in his hands. And, from the hollow shaft of the lamp, appeared three rolled-up booklets.

Denny turned toward the girl, who stood unmoving, her face calm — virtually so, anyway; Nick saw her lips press tightly together as if she were preparing herself for something.

Lifting his right arm, Denny hit her, hit at her eye but missed. She had ducked, but not far enough; the blow caught her on the side of the head above the ear. And, with startling speed, she grabbed his extended arm, lifted his wrist and bit him, bit deep into his flesh. Denny screamed, flailing at her, trying to free his wrist from her teeth.

‘Help me!’ Denny yelled at Nick and Zeta. Nick, not knowing what to do, started toward the girl, hearing himself mumble at her, telling her to let go, telling her she might bite through a nerve and leave his hand paralyzed. Zeta, however, seized her by the jaw, inserted his big, dark-stained fingers into the hinges and pried her jaws open; Denny at once withdrew his arm, examined the bite; he seemed dazed, and then, immediately after, the violence returned to his face. And now it was a murderous violence; his eyes bulged as if about to pop literally from his head. He bent, picked up the lamp, lifted it high.

Zeta pinned him, gasping; he held the boy in a huge grip, and at the same time gasping to Nick, ‘Get her out of here. Take her somewhere he can’t find her. Can’t you see? He’s an alcohol addict. They’ll do anything. Go!’

In a trance, Nick took hold of the girl’s hand and led her rapidly from the apartment.

‘You can take my squib,’ Zeta, panting, yelled after him.

‘Okay,’ Nick said; he tugged the girl along — she came willingly, small and light — and he reached the elevator, stabbed at the button.

‘We better run off up to the roof,’ Charley said. She seemed calm; she, in fact, smiled up at him with her radiant smile which made her face so exquisitely lovely.

‘Are you afraid of him?’ Nick asked as they got onto the escalator and began to sprint up it, two steps at a time. He still held her gripped by the wrist, and she still managed to keep up with him. Lithe, spirit-like, she combined an animal-like ability to move swiftly with an almost supernatural gliding quality. Like a deer, he thought, as they continued on up.

Far below them on the escalator, Denny appeared. ‘Come back!’ he yelled his voice shaking with agitation. ‘I’m going to have to go to a hospital to get this bite looked at. Drive me to the hospital.’

‘He always says that,’ Charley said placidly, unstirred by the boy’s pitiful whine. ‘Just ignore him and hope he can’t run faster than us.’

‘Does he do that to you very often?’ Nick panted as they reached the roof field and sprinted in the direction of Zeta’s parked squib.

‘He knows what I’ll do,’ Charley said. ‘You saw what I did — I bit him and he can’t stand to be bitten. Have you ever been bitten by a full-grown person? Have you ever thought what it would feel like? And I can do another thing — I stand against the wall and sort of hold myself there with my arms out, so I’m tight against something, and then I kick, with both feet. I’ll have to show you sometime. Just remember: never try to touch me when I don’t want to be touched. No man is going to do that and get away with it.’

Nick got her into the squib, ran around to the driver’s side, slid in behind the tiller. He started up the motor, and there, at the escalator exit, stood Denny, wheezing. Seeing him, Charley laughed in delight, a girlish laugh; she put both hands to her mouth and rocked from side to side, her eyes shining. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘He’s so angry. And there’s nothing he can do. Take off.’

Pressing down on the power knob, Nick took off; the squib, old and battered as it was, had a well souped-up motor which Zeta had built himself; he had modified every moving part. So, in his own squib, Denny would never catch him. Unless of course, Denny had souped up his own squib.

‘What do you know about his squib?’ he asked Charley, who sat smoothing down her hair and arranging herself tidily. ‘Has he—’

‘Denny can’t do anything involving manual labor. He hates to get his hands greasy. But he’s got a Shellingberg 8, with the B-3 engine. So he can go very fast. Sometimes, if there’s no other traffic, like late at night, he opens it up all the way to fifty.’

‘No problem,’ Nick said. ‘This old clinker will reach seventy or even seventy-five. If Zeta’s word can be trusted.’ The squib was moving rapidly, now, weaving in and out of the mid-morning traffic. ‘I’ll lose him,’ Nick said. Behind him he saw a Shellingberg, painted bright purple. ‘Is that him?’ he asked her.

Twisting around to see, Charley said, ‘Yes, that’s it. Denny owns the only purple Shellingberg 8 in the United States.’

‘I’ll get into heavy cross-city traffic,’ Nick said, and began to descend to the level frequented by short-hop squibs. Almost at once, two innocuous squibs filled in behind him as he tailgated the squib ahead. ‘And I’ll turn here,’ he said, as the balloon marked HASTINGS AVE appeared bobbingly on his right. He turned, became — as he had hoped — utterly involved in the slow rows of squibs looking for parking places… most of them driven by women out on shopping trips.

No sign of the purple Shellingberg 8. He peered in all directions, trying to catch sight of it.

‘You’ve lost him,’ Charley said matter-of-factly. ‘He depends on speed — you know, free speed high up out of traffic — but down here—’ She laughed, her eyes shining with what seemed to him delight. ‘He’s too impatient; he never drives down here.’

Nick asked, ‘So what do you think he’ll do?’

‘Give up. He’ll get over being mad in a couple of days, anyhow. But for about forty-eight hours he’ll be homicidal. That really was stupid of me to hide those booklets in the lamp; he’s right. But I still don’t like being hit.’ Meditatively, she rubbed the side of her head where he had hit her. ‘He hits hard,’ she said. ‘But he can’t stand to be hurt back; I can’t really hit him and make it work — I’m too small — but you saw me bite.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The all time great bite of the century.’ He did not wish to dispute that.

‘It’s very nice of you,’ Charley said, ‘a total stranger, helping me like this, when you don’t even know me. You don’t even know my name.’

‘I’ll settle for Charley,’ he said. It seemed to fit her.

‘I didn’t get your name,’ the girl said.

‘Nick Appleton.’

She laughed her bubbling glee from between the fingers of her hands. ‘That’s the name a character in a book would have. “Nick Appleton.” A private track, maybe. Or on one of those TV shows.’

‘It’s the kind of a name that denotes competency,’ Nick said.

‘You are competent,’ she admitted. ‘I mean you got us — me — out of there. Thank you.’

‘Where are you going to spend the next forty-eight hours?’ Nick asked. ‘Until he cools off?’

‘I have another apartment; we use that, too. We transfer stuff from one to the other, in case a PSS s-and-s warrant gets served on us. Search and seizure, you know. But they don’t suspect us. Denny’s family has a lot of money and influence, and one time a track started probing around, and a top PSS official, a friend of Denny’s dad, called to tip us off. That’s the only time we’ve had any thouble.’

Nick said, ‘I don’t think you should go to the other apartment’

‘Why not? All my things are there; I have to go there.’

‘Go where he won’t find you. He might kill you.’ He had read articles about the personality changes often suffered by alcohol addicts. How much feral cruelty often came out, a virtually psychopathic personality structure, blended with the fast moving quality of mania and the suspicious rage of paranoia. Well, now he had seen one, seen an alcohol addict. And he did not like it. No wonder the authorities had made it illegal — really illegal: an alcohol addict usually found himself, if caught, in a psychodidactic work camp for the rest of his life. Unless he could pay for a major lawyer who in turn could pay for expensive testing of the individual, with the idea of proving that the period of addiction was over. But of course it was never over. An alc-hound remained what he was forever, even after Platt’s surgery on the diencephalon, the area of the brain which controlled oral cravings.

‘If he kills me,’ Charley said, ‘I’ll kill him. And, basically he’s more afraid than I am. He has a lot of fears; most of what he does he does out of fear — out of panic, I should say. He’s in a constant hysterical panic.’

‘What if he hasn’t been drinking?’

‘He’s still scared, and that’s why he drinks… but he isn’t violent unless he drinks; he just wants to run away and hide. But he can’t do that — because he believes people are watching him and know he’s a dealer — so then he drinks; that’s when it occurs.’

‘But by drinking,’ Nick said, ‘he draws attention to himself; that’s the very thing he’s trying to avoid. Isn’t it?’

‘Maybe not. Maybe he wants to get caught. He’s never done a lick of work in his life before dealing in tracts and booklets and minitapes; his family always supported him. And now he takes advantage of the cred — what’s the word?’

‘Credulity,’ Nick said.

‘Does that mean like when you want to believe?’

‘Yes.’ It was reasonably close.

‘So he takes advantage of their credulity, because people, a lot of people, superstitiously believe in Provoni, you know? About his coming back? All that shrnap you find in Cordon’s writings?’

Nick, incredulous, asked, ‘You mean to say that you people who deal in Cordon’s writings, you people who sell it—’

‘We don’t have to believe it. Does the man who sells someone a pint of liquor have to be an alcohol addict himself?’

The logic, correct as it was, appalled him. ‘It’s for money,’ he said. ‘You probably don’t even read what’s in those tracts; you just know them by name. Like a clerk working in a warehouse.’

‘I’ve read a few.’ She turned to face him, still massaging her forehead. ‘God, I’ve got a headache. Do you have any darvon or codeine at your place?’