Epilogue

   The trial of Jason Taverner for the first-degree murder of Alys Buckman mysteriously backfired, ending with a verdict of not guilty, due in part to the excellent legal help NBC and Bill Wolfer provided, but due also to the fact that Taverner had committed no crime. There had in fact been no crime, and the original coroner’s finding was reversed—accompanied by the retirement of the coroner and his replacement by a younger man. Jason Taverner’s TV ratings, which had dropped to a low point during the trial, rose with the verdict, and Taverner found himself with an audience of thirty-five million, rather than thirty.
   The house which Felix Buckman and his sister Alys had owned and occupied drifted along in a nebulous legal status for several years; Alys had willed her part of the equity to a lesbian organization called the Sons of Caribron with headquarters in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, and the society wished to make the house into a retreat for their several saints. In March of 2003 Buckman sold his share of the equity to the Sons of Caribron, and, with the money derived, moved himself and all the items of his many collections to Borneo, where living was cheap and the police amiable.
   Experiments with the multiple-space-inclusion drug KR-3 were abandoned late in 1992, due to its toxic qualities. However, for several years the police covertly experimented with it on inmates in forced-labor camps. But ultimately, due to the general widespread hazards involved, the Director ordered the project abandoned.
   Kathy Nelson learned—and accepted—a year later that her husband Jack had been long dead, as McNulty had told her. The recognition of this precipitated a blatant psychotic break in her, and she again was hospitalized, this time for good at a far less stylish psychiatric hospital than Morningside.
   For the fifty-first and final time in her life Ruth Rae married, in this terminal instance, to an elderly, wealthy, potbellied importer of firearms located in lower New Jersey, barely operating within the limit of the law. In the spring of 1994 she died of an overdose of alcohol taken with a new tranquilizer, Phrenozine, which acts as a central nervous system depressant, as well as suppressing the vagus nerve. At the time of her death she weighed ninety-two pounds, the result of difficult—and chronic—psychological problems. It never became possible to certify with any clarity the death as either an accident or a deliberate suicide; after all, the medication was relatively new. Her husband, Jake Mongo, at the time of her death had become heavily in debt and outlasted her barely a year. Jason Taverner attended her funeral and, at the later graveside ceremony, met a girl friend of Ruth’s named Fay Krankheit, with whom he presently formed a working relationship that lasted two years. From her Jason learned that Ruth Rae had periodically attached herself to the phone-grid sex network; learning this, he understood better why she had become as she had when he met her in Vegas.
   Cynical and aging, Heather Hart gradually abandoned her singing career and dropped out of sight. After a few tries to locate her, Jason Taverner gave up and wrote it off as one of the better successes of his life, despite its dreary ending.
   He heard, too, that Mary Anne Dominic had won a major international prize for her ceramic kitchenware, but he never bothered to trace her down. Monica Buff, however, showed up in his life toward the end of 1998, as unkempt as ever but still attractive in her grubby way. Jason dated her a few times and then dumped her. For months she wrote him odd, long letters with cryptic signs drawn over the words, but that, too, stopped at last, and for this he was glad.
   In the warrens under the ruins of the great universities the student populations gradually gave up their futile attempts to maintain life as they understood it, and voluntarily—for the most part—entered forced-labor camps. So the dregs of the Second Civil War gradually ebbed away, and in 2004, as a pilot model, Columbia University was rebuilt and a safe, sane student body allowed to attend its police-sanctioned courses.
   Toward the end of his life retired Police General Felix Buckman, living in Borneo on his pension, wrote an autobiographical exposé of the planetwide police apparatus., the book soon being circulated illegally throughout the major cities of earth. For this, in the summer of 2017, General Buckman was shot by an assassin, never identified, and no arrests were ever made. His book, The Law-and-order Mentality, continued to clandestinely circulate for a number of years after his death, but even that, too, eventually became forgotten. The forced-labor camps dwindled away and at last ceased to exist. The police apparatus became by degrees, over the decades, too cumbersome to threaten anyone, and in 2136 the rank of police marshal was abandoned.
   Some of the bondage cartoons that Alys Buckman had collected during her aborted life found their way into museums displaying artifacts of faded-out popular cultures, and ultimately she became officially identified by the Librarian’s Journal Quarterly as the foremost authority of the late twentieth century in the matter of S-M art. The one-dollar black Trans-Mississippi postage stamp which Felix Buckman had laid on her was bought at auction in 1999 by a dealer from Warsaw, Poland. It disappeared thereupon into the hazy world of philately, never to surface again.
   Barney Buckman, the son of Felix and Alys Buckman, grew eventually into difficult manhood, joined the New York police, and during his second year as a beat cop fell from a substandard fire escape while responding to a report of burglary in a tenement where wealthy blacks had once lived. Paralyzed from the waist down at twenty-three, he began to interest himself in old television commercials, and, before long, owned an impressive library of the most ancient and sought-after items of this sort, which he bought and sold and traded shrewdly. He lived a long life, with only a feeble memory of his father and no memory at all of Alys. By and large Barney Buckman complained little, and continued in particular to absorb himself in old-time AlkaSeltzer plugs, his specialty out of all the rest of such golden trivia.
   Someone at the Los Angeles Police Academy stole the twenty-two Derringer pistol which Felix Buckman had kept in his desk, and with this the gun vanished forever. Lead slug weapons had by that time become generally extinct except as collector’s pieces, and the inventory clerk at the academy whose job it was to keep track of the Derringer assumed wisely that it had become a prop in the bachelors’ quarters of some minor police official, and let the investigation drop there.
   In 2047 Jason Taverner, long since retired from the entertainment field, died in an exclusive nursing home of acolic fibrosis, an ailment acquired by Terrans at various Martian colonies privately maintained for dubious enthrallment of the weary rich. His estate consisted of a five-bedroom house in Des Moines, filled mostly with memorabilia, and many shares of stock in a corporation which had tried—and failed—to finance a commercial shuttle service to Proxima Centaurus. His passing was not generally noticed, although small obit squibs appeared in most metropolitan newspapers, ignored by the TV news people but not by Mary Anne Dominic, who, even in her eighties, still considered Jason Taverner a celebrity, and her meeting him an important milestone in her long and successful life.
   The blue vase made by Mary Anne Dominic and purchased by Jason Taverner as a gift for Heather Hart wound up in a private collection of modern pottery. It remains there to this day, and is much treasured. And, in fact, by a number of people who know ceramics, openly and genuinely cherished. And loved.

The Man in the High Castle

Philip Kindred Dick

Acknowledgements
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The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick

   To my wife Anne, without whose silence
   This book would never have been written.

Acknowledgements

   The version of the I Ching or Book of Changes used and quoted in this novel is the Richard Wilhelm translation rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes, published by Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series XIX, 1950, by the Bollingen Foundation, Inc., New York.
   The haiku on page 45 is by Yosa Buson, translated by Harold G. Henderson, from the Anthology of Japanese Literature, Volume One, compiled and edited by Donald Keene, Grove Press, 1955, New York.
   The waka on page 128 is by Chiyo, translated by Daisetz T. Suzuki, from Zen and Japanese Culture, by Daisetz T. Suzuki, published by Pantheon Books, Bollingen Series LXIV, 1959, by the Bollingen Foundation, Inc., New York,
   I have made much use of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany, by William L. Shirer, Simon and Schuster, 1960, New York; Hitler, a Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock, Harper, 1953, New York; The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, edited and translated by Louis P. Lochner, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948, New York; The Tibetan Book of the Dead, compiled and edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, Oxford University Press, 1960, New York; The Foxes of the Desert, by Paul Carell, E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1961, New York. And I owe personal thanks to the eminent Western writer Will Cook for his help with material dealing with historic artifacts and the U.S. Frontier Period.

1

   For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. But the valuable shipment from the Rocky Mountain States had not arrived. As he opened up his store on Friday morning and saw only letters on the floor by the mail slot he thought, I’m going to have an angry customer.
   Pouring himself a cup of instant tea from the five-cent wall dispenser he got a broom and began to sweep; soon he had the front of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. ready for the day, all spick and span with the cash register full of change, a fresh vase of marigolds, and the radio playing background music. Outdoors along the sidewalk businessmen hurried toward their offices along Montgomery Street. Far off, a cable car passed; Childan halted to watch it with pleasure. Women in their long colorful silk dresses … he watched them, too. Then the phone rang. He turned to answer it.
   “Yes,” a familiar voice said to his answer. Childan’s heart sank. “This is Mr. Tagomi. Did my Civil War recruiting poster arrive yet, sir? Please recall; you promised it sometime last week.” The fussy, brisk voice, barely polite, barely keeping the code. “Did I not give you a deposit, sir, Mr. Childan, with that stipulation? This is to be a gift, you see. I explained that. A client.”
   “Extensive inquiries,” Childan began, “which I’ve had made at my own expense, Mr. Tagomi, sir, regarding the promised parcel, which you realize originates outside of this region and is therefore—”
   But Tagomi broke in, “Then it has not arrived.”
   “No, Mr. Tagomi, sir.”
   An icy pause.
   “I can wait no furthermore,” Tagomi said.
   “No sir.” Childan gazed morosely through the store window at the warm bright day and the San Francisco office buildings.
   “A substitute, then. Your recommendation, Mr. Chil-dan?” Tagomi deliberately mispronounced the name; insult within the code that made Childan’s ears burn. Place pulled, the dreadful mortification of their situation. Robert Childan’s aspirations and fears and torments rose up and exposed themselves, swamped him, stopping his tongue. He stammered, his hand sticky on the phone. The air of his store smelled of the marigolds; the music played on, but he felt as if he were falling into some distant sea.
   “Well …” he managed to mutter. “Butter churn. Icecream maker circa 1900.” His mind refused to think. Just when you forgot about it; just when you fool yourself. He was thirty-eight years old, and he could remember the prewar days, the other times. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World’s Fair; the former better world. “Could I bring various desirable items out to your business location?” he mumbled.
   An appointment was made for two o’clock. Have to shut store, he knew as he hung up the phone. No choice. Have to keep goodwill of such customers; business depends on them.
   Standing shakily, he became aware that someone—a couple—had entered the store. Young man and girl, both handsome, well-dressed. Ideal. He calmed himself and moved professionally, easily, in their direction, smiling. They were bending to scrutinize a counter display, had picked up a lovely ashtray. Married, he guessed. Live out in City of the Winding Mists, the new exclusive apartments on Skyline overlooking Belmont.
   “Hello,” he said, and felt better. They smiled at him without any superiority, only kindness. His displays—which really were the best of their kind on the Coast—had awed them a little; he saw that and was grateful. They understood.
   “Really excellent pieces, sir,” the young man said.
   Childan bowed spontaneously.
   Their eyes, warm not only with human bond but with the shared enjoyment of the art objects he sold, their mutual tastes and satisfactions, remained fixed on him; they were thanking him for having things like these for them to see, pick up and examine, handle perhaps without even buying. Yes, he thought, they know what sort of store they are in; this is not tourist trash, not redwood plaques reading MUIR WOODS, MARIN COUNTY, PSA, or funny signs or girly rings or postcards or views of the Bridge. The girl’s eyes especially, large, dark. How easily, Childan thought, I could fall in love with a girl like this. How tragic my life, then; as if it weren’t bad enough already. The stylish black hair, lacquered nails, pierced ears for the long dangling brass handmade earrings.
   “Your earrings,” he murmured. “Purchased here, perhaps?”
   “No,” she said. “At home.”
   Childan nodded. No contemporary American art; only the past could be represented here, in a store such as his. “You are here for long?” he asked. “To our San Francisco?”
   “I’m stationed here indefinitely,” the man said. “With Standard of Living for Unfortunate Areas Planning Commission of Inquiry.” Pride showed on his face. Not the military. Not one of the gum-chewing boorish draftees with their greedy peasant faces, wandering up Market Street, gaping at the bawdy shows, the sex movies, the shooting galleries, the cheap nightclubs with photos of middle-aged blondes holding their nipples between their wrinkled fingers and leering… the honkytonk jazz slums that made up most of the flat part of San Francisco, rickety tin and board shacks that had sprung up from the ruins even before the last bomb fell. No—this man was of the elite. Cultured, educated, even more so than Mr. Tagomi, who was after all a high official with the ranking Trade Mission on the Pacific Coast. Tagomi was an old man. His attitudes had formed in the War Cabinet days.
   “Had you wished American traditional ethnic art objects as a gift?” Childan asked. “Or to decorate perhaps a new apartment for your stay here?” If the latter… his heart picked up.
   “An accurate guess,” the girl said. “We are starting to decorate. A bit undecided. Do you think you could inform us?”
   “I could arrange to arrive at your apartment, yes,” Childan said. “Bringing several hand cases, I can suggest in context, at your leisure. This, of course, is our speciality.” He dropped his eyes so as to conceal his hope. There might be thousands of dollars involved. “I am getting in a New England table, maple, all wood-legged, no nails. Immense beauty and worth. And a mirror from the time of the 1812 War. And also the aboriginal art: a group of vegetable-dyed goat-hair rugs.”
   “I myself,” the man said, “prefer the art of the cities.”
   “Yes,” Childan said eagerly. “Listen, sir. I have a mural from WPA post-office period, original, done on board, four sections, depicting Horace Greeley. Priceless collector’s item.”
   “Ah,” the man said, his dark eyes flashing.
   “And a Victrola cabinet of 1920 made into a liquor cabinet.”
   “Ah.”
   “And, sir, listen: framed signed picture of Jean Harlow.”
   The man goggled at him.
   “Shall we make arrangements?” Childan said, seizing this correct psychological instant. From his inner coat pocket he brought his pen, notebook. “I shall take your name and address, sir and lady.”
   Afterward, as the couple strolled from his store, Childan stood, hands behind his back, watching the street. Joy. If all business days were like this… but it was more than business, the success of his store. It was a chance to meet a young Japanese couple socially, on a basis of acceptance of him as a man rather than him as a yank or, at best, a tradesman who sold art objects. Yes, these new young people, of the rising generation, who did not remember the days before the war or even the war itself—they were the hope of the world. Place difference did not have the significance for them.
   It will end, Childan thought. Someday. The very idea of place. Not governed and governing, but people.
   And yet he trembled with fear, imagining himself knocking at their door. He examined his notes. The Kasouras. Being admitted, no doubt offered tea. Would he do the right thing? Know the proper act and utterance at each moment? Or would he disgrace himself, like an animal, by some dismal faux pas?
   The girl’s name was Betty. Such understanding in her face, he thought. The gentle, sympathetic eyes. Surely, even in the short time in the store, she had glimpsed his hopes and defeats.
   His hopes– he felt suddenly dizzy. What aspirations bordering on the insane if not the suicidal did he have? But it was known, relations between Japanese and yanks, although generally it was between a Japanese man and yank woman. This… he quailed at the idea. And she was married. He whipped his mind away from the pageant of his involuntary thoughts and began busily opening the morning’s mail.
   His hands, he discovered, were still shaking. And then he recalled his two o’clock appointment with Mr. Tagomi; at that, his hands ceased shaking and his nervousness became determination. I’ve got to come up with something acceptable, he said to himself. Where? How? What? A phone call. Sources. Business ability. Scrape up a fully restored 1929 Ford including fabric top (black). Grand slam to keep patronage forever. Crated original mint trimotor airmail plane discovered in barn in Alabama, etc. Produce mummified head of Mr. B. Bill, including flowing white hair; sensational American artifact. Make my reputation in top connoisseur circles throughout Pacific, not excluding Home Islands.
   To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand.

   In his room on Hayes Street, Frank Frink lay in bed wondering how to get up. Sun glared past the blind onto the heap of clothes that had fallen to the floor. His glasses, too. Would he step on them? Try to get to bathroom by other route, he thought. Crawl or roll. His head ached but he did not feel sad. Never look back, he decided. Time? The clock on the dresser. Eleven-thirty! Good grief. But still he lay.
   I’m fired, he thought.
   Yesterday he had done wrong at the factory. Spouted the wrong kind of talk to Mr. Wyndam-Matson, who had a dished-in face with Socrates-type nose, diamond ring, gold fly zipper. In other words, a power. A throne. Frink’s thoughts wandered groggily.
   Yes, he thought, and now they’ll blacklist me; my skill is no use—I have no trade. Fifteen years’ experience. Gone.
   And now he would have to appear at the Laborers’ Justification Commission for a revision of his work category. Since he had never been able to make out Wyndam-Matson’s relationship to the pinocs–the puppet white government at Sacramento—he could not fathom his ex-employer’s power to sway the real authorities, the Japanese. The LJC was pinoc run. He would be facing four or five middle-aged plump white faces, on the order of Wyndam-Matson’s. If he failed to get justification there, he would make his way to one of the Import-Export Trade Missions which operated out of Tokyo, and which had offices throughout California, Oregon, Washington, and the parts of Nevada included in the Pacific States of America. But if he failed successfully to plead there…
   Plans roamed his mind as he lay in bed gazing up at the ancient light fixture in the ceiling. He could for instance slip across into the Rocky Mountain States. But it was loosely banded to the PSA, and might extradite him. What about the South? His body recoiled. Ugh. Not that. As a white man he would have plenty of place, in fact more than he had here in the PSA. But… he did not want that kind of place.
   And, worse, the South had a cat’s cradle of ties, economic, ideological, and god knew what, with the Reich. And Frank Frink was a Jew.
   His original name was Frank Fink. He had been born on the East Coast, in New York, and in 1941 he had been drafted into the Army of the United States of America, right after the collapse of Russia. After the Japs had taken Hawaii he had been sent to the West Coast. When the war ended, there he was, on the Japanese side of the settlement line. And here he was today, fifteen years later.
   In 1947, on Capitulation Day, he had more or less gone berserk. Hating the Japs as he did, he had vowed revenge; he had buried his Service weapons ten feet underground, in a basement, well-wrapped and oiled, for the day he and his buddies arose. However, time was the great healer, a fact he had not taken into account. When he thought of the idea now, the great blood bath, the purging of the pinocs and their masters, he felt as if were reviewing one of those stained yearbooks from his high school days, coming upon an account of his boyhood aspirations. Frank “Goldfish” Fink is going to be a paleontologist and vows to marry Norma Prout. Norma Prout was the class schones Mädchen, and he really had vowed to marry her. That was all so goddam long ago, like listening to Fred Allen or seeing a W. C. Fields movie. Since 1947 he had probably seen or talked to six hundred thousand Japanese, and the desire to do violence to any or all of them had simply never materialized, after the first few months. It just was not relevant any more.
   But wait. There was one, a Mr. Omuro, who had bought control of a great area of rental property in downtown San Francisco, and who for a time had been Frank’s landlord. There was a bad apple, he thought. A shark who had never made repairs, had partitioned rooms smaller and smaller, raised rents… Omuro had gouged the poor, especially the nearly destitute jobless ex-servicemen during the depression years of the early ‘fifties. However, it had been one of the Japanese trade missions which had cut off Omuro’s head for his profiteering. And nowadays such a violation of the harsh, rigid, but just Japanese civil law was unheard of. It was a credit to the incorruptibility of the Jap occupation officials, especially those who had come in after the War Cabinet had fallen.
   Recalling the rugged, stoic honesty of the Trade Missions, Frink felt reassured. Even Wyndam-Matson would be waved off like a noisy fly. W-M Corporation owner or not. At least, so he hoped. I guess I really have faith in this Co-Prosperity Pacific Alliance stuff, he said to himself. Strange. Looking back to the early days… it had seemed such an obvious fake, then. Empty propaganda. But now…
   He rose from the bed and unsteadily made his way to the bathroom. While he washed and shaved, he listened to the midday news on the radio.
   “Let us not deride this effort,” the radio was saying as he momentarily shut off the hot water.
   No, we won’t, Frink thought bitterly. He knew which particular effort the radio had in mind. Yet, there was after all something humorous about it, the picture of stolid, grumpy Germans walking around on Mars, on the red sand where no humans had ever stepped before. Lathering his jowls, Frink began a chanting satire to himself. Gott, Herr Kreisleiter. Ist dies vielleicht der Ort wo man das Konzentrationslager bilden kann? Das Wetter ist so schon. Heiss, aben doch schon…
   The radio said: “Co-Prosperity Civilization must pause and consider whether in our quest to provide a balanced equity of mutual duties and responsibilities coupled with remunerations…” Typical jargon from the ruling hierarchy, Frink noted. “…we have not failed to perceive the future arena in which the affairs of man will be acted out, be they Nordic, Japanese, Negroid…” On and on it went.
   As he dressed, he mulled with pleasure his satire. The weather is schon, so schon. But there is nothing to breathe…
   However, it was a fact; the Pacific had done nothing toward colonization of the planets. It was involved—bogged down, rather—in South America. While the Germans were busy bustling enormous robot construction systems across space, the Japs were still burning off the jungles in the interior of Brazil, erecting eight-floor clay apartment houses for ex-headhunters. By the time the Japs got their first spaceship off the ground the Germans would have the entire solar system sewed up tight. Back in the quaint old history-book days, the Germans had missed out while the rest of Europe put the final touches on their colonial empires. However, Frink reflected, they were not going to be last this time; they had learned.
   And then he thought about Africa, and the Nazi experiment there. And his blood stopped in his veins, hesitated, at last went on.
   That huge empty ruin.
   The radio said: “…we must consider with pride however our emphasis on the fundamental physical needs of peoples of all place, their subspiritual aspirations which must be…”
   Frink shut the radio off. Then, calmer, he turned it back on.
   Christ on the crapper, he thought. Africa. For the ghosts of dead tribes. Wiped out to make a land of—what? Who knew? Maybe even the master architects in Berlin did not know. Bunch of automatons, building and toiling away. Building? Grinding down. Ogres out of a paleontology exhibit, at their task of making a cup from an enemy’s skull, the whole family industriously scooping out the contents—the raw brains– first, to eat. Then useful utensils of men’s leg bones. Thrifty, to think not only of eating the people you did not like, but eating them out of their own skull. The first technicians! Prehistoric man in a sterile white lab coat in some Berlin university lab, experimenting with uses to which other people’s skull, skin, ears, fat could be put to. Ja, Herr Doktor. A new use for the big toe; see, one can adapt the joint for a quick-acting cigarette lighter mechanism. Now, if only Herr Krupp can produce it in quantity…
   It horrified him, this thought: the ancient gigantic cannibal near-man flourishing now, ruling the world once more. We spent a million years escaping him, Frink thought, and now he’s back. And not merely as the adversary… but as the master.
   “…we can deplore,” the radio, the voice of the little yellow-bellies from Tokyo was saying. God, Frink thought; and we called them monkeys, these civilized bandy-legged shrimps who would no more set up gas ovens than they would melt their wives into sealing wax. “…and we have deplored often in the past the dreadful waste of humans in this fanatical striving which sets the broader mass of men wholly outside the legal community.” They, the Japs, were so strong on law. “…To quote a Western saint familiar to all: ‘What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?’ “ The radio paused. Frink, tying his tie, also paused. It was the morning ablution.
   I have to make my pact with them here, he realized. Black-listed or not; it’d be death for me if I left Japanese-controlled land and showed up in the South or in Europe—anywhere in the Reich.
   I’ll have to come to terms with old Wyndam-Matson.
   Seated on his bed, a cup of lukewarm tea beside him, Frink got down his copy of the I Ching. From their leather tube he took the forty-nine yarrow stalks. He considered, until he had his thoughts properly controlled and his questions worked out.
   Aloud he said, “How should I approach Wyndam-Matson in order to come to decent terms with him?” He wrote the question down on the tablet, then began whipping the yarrow stalks from hand to hand until he had the first line, the beginning. An eight. Half the sixty-four hexagrams eliminated already. He divided the stalks and obtained the second line. Soon, being so expert, he had all six lines; the hexagram lay before him, and he did not need to identify it by the chart. He could recognize it as Hexagram Fifteen. Ch’ien. Modesty. Ah. The low will be raised up, the high brought down, powerful families humbled; he did not have to refer to the text—he knew it by heart. A good omen. The oracle was giving him favorable council.
   And yet he was a bit disappointed. There was something fatuous about Hexagram Fifteen. Too goody-goody. Naturally he should be modest. Perhaps there was an idea in it, however. After all, he had no power over old W-M. He could not compel him to take him back. All he could do was adopt the point of view of Hexagram Fifteen; this was that sort of moment, when one had to petition, to hope, to await with faith. Heaven in its time would raise him up to his old job or perhaps even to something better.
   He had no lines to read, no nines or sixes; it was static. So he was through. It did not move into a second hexagram.
   A new question, then. Setting himself, he said aloud, “Will I ever see Juliana again?”
   That was his wife. Or rather his ex-wife. Juliana had divorced him a year ago, and he had not seen her in months; in fact he did not even know where she lived. Evidently she had left San Francisco. Perhaps even the PSA. Either their mutual friends had not heard from her or they were not telling him.
   Busily he maneuvered the yarrow stalks, his eyes fixed on the tallies. How many times he had asked about Juliana, one question or another? Here came the hexagram, brought forth by the passive chance workings of the vegetable stalks. Random, and yet rooted in the moment in which he lived, in which his life was bound up with all other lives and particles in the universe. The necessary hexagram picturing in its pattern of broken and unbroken lines the situation. He, Juliana, the factory on Gough Street, the Trade Missions that ruled, the exploration of the planets, the billion chemical heaps in Africa that were now not even corpses, the aspirations of the thousands around him in the shanty warrens of San Francisco, the mad creatures in Berlin with their calm faces and manic plans—all connected in this moment of casting the yarrow stalks to select the exact wisdom appropriate in a book begun in the thirtieth century B.C. A book created by the sages of China over a period of five thousand years, winnowed, perfected, that superb cosmology—and science—codified before Europe had even learned to do long division.
   The hexagram. His heart dropped. Forty-four. Kou. Coming to Meet. Its sobering judgment. The maiden is powerful. One should not marry such a maiden. Again he had gotten it in connection with Juliana.
   Oy vey, he thought, settling back. So she was wrong for me; I know that. I didn’t ask that. Why does the oracle have to remind me? A bad fate for me, to have met her and been in love—be in love—with her.
   Juliana—the best-looking woman he had ever married. Soot-black eyebrows and hair; trace amounts of Spanish blood distributed as pure color, even to her lips. Her rubbery, soundless walk; she had worn saddle shoes left over from high school. In fact all her clothes had a dilapidated quality and the definite suggestion of being old and often washed. He and she had been so broke so long that despite her looks she had had to wear a cotton sweater, cloth zippered jacket, brown tweed skirt and bobby socks, and she hated him and it because it made her look, she had said, like a woman who played tennis or (even worse) collected mushrooms in the woods.
   But above and beyond everything else, he had originally been drawn by her screwball expression; for no reason, Juliana greeted strangers with a portentous, nudnik, Mona Lisa smile that hung them up between responses, whether to say hello or not. And she was so attractive that more often than not they did say hello, whereupon Juliana glided by. At first he had thought it was just plain bad eyesight, but finally he had decided that it revealed a deep-dyed otherwise concealed stupidity at her core. And so finally her borderline flicker of greeting to strangers had annoyed him, as had her plantlike, silent, I’m-on-a-mysterious-errand way of coming and going. But even then, toward the end, when they had been fighting so much, he still never saw her as anything but a direct, literal invention of God’s, dropped into his life for reasons he would never know. And on that account—a sort of religious intuition or faith about her—he could not get over having lost her.
   She seemed so close right now… as if he still had her. That spirit, still busy in his life, padding through his room in search of—whatever it was Juliana sought. And in his mind whenever he took up the volumes of the oracle.
   Seated on his bed, surrounded by lonely disorder, preparing to go out and begin his day, Frank Frink wondered who else in the vast complicated city of San Francisco was at this same moment consulting the oracle. And were they all getting as gloomy advice as he? Was the tenor of the Moment as adverse for them as it was for him?

2

   Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi sat consulting the divine Fifth Book of Confucian wisdom, the Taoist oracle called for centuries the I Ching or Book of Changes. At noon that day, he had begun to become apprehensive about his appointment with Mr. Childan, which would occur in two more hours.
   His suite of offices on the twentieth floor of the Nippon Times Building on Taylor Street overlooked the Bay. Through the glass wall he could watch ships entering, passing beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. At this moment a freighter could be seen beyond Alcatraz, but Mr. Tagomi did not care. Going to the wall he unfastened the cord and lowered the bamboo blinds over the view. The large central office became darker; he did not have to squint against the glare. Now he could think more clearly.
   It was not within his power, he decided, to please his client. No matter what Mr. Childan came up with: the client would not be impressed. Let us face that, he had said to himself. But we can keep him from becoming displeased, at least.
   We can refrain from insulting him by a moldy gift.
   The client would soon reach San Francisco airport by avenue of the high-place new German rocket, the Messerschmitt 9-E. Mr. Tagomi had never ridden on such a ship; when he met Mr. Baynes he would have to take care to appear blasé, no matter how large the rocket turned out to be. Now to practice. He stood in front of the mirror on the office wall, creating a face of composure, mildly bored, inspecting his own cold features for any giveaway. Yes, they are very noisy, Mr. Baynes, sir. One cannot read. But then the flight from Stockholm to San Francisco is only forty-five minutes. Perhaps then a word about German mechanical failures? I suppose you heard the radio. That crash over Madagascar. I must say, there is something to be said for the old piston planes.
   Essential to avoid politics. For he did not know Mr. Baynes’ views on leading issues of the day. Yet they might arise. Mr. Baynes, being Swedish, would be a neutral. Yet he had chosen Lufthansa rather than SAS. A cautious ploy… Mr. Baynes, sir, they say Herr Bormann is quite ill. That a new Reichs Chancellor will be chosen by the Partei this autumn. Rumor only? So much secrecy, alas, between Pacific and Reich.
   In the folder on his desk, clipping from New York Times of a recent speech by Mr. Baynes. Mr. Tagomi now studied it critically, bending due to slight failure of correction by his contact lenses. The speech had to do with need of exploring once more—ninety-eighth time?—for sources of water on the moon. “We may still solve this heartbreaking dilemma,” Mr. Baynes was quoted. “Our nearest neighbor, and so far the most unrewarding except for military purposes.” Sic! Mr. Tagomi thought, using high-place Latin word. Clue to Mr. Baynes. Looks askance at merely military. Mr. Tagomi made a mental note.
   Touching the intercom button Mr. Tagomi said, “Miss Ephreikian, I would like you to bring in your tape recorder, please.”
   The outer office door slid to one side and Miss Ephreikian, today pleasantly adorned with blue flowers in her hair, appeared.
   “Bit of lilac,” Mr. Tagomi observed. Once, he had professionally flower-raised back home on Hokkaido.
   Miss Ephreikian, a tall, brown-haired Armenian girl, bowed.
   “Ready with Zip-Track Speed Master?” Mr. Tagomi asked.
   “Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Miss Ephreikian seated herself, the portable battery-operated tape recorder ready.
   Mr. Tagomi began, “I inquired of the oracle, “Will the meeting between myself and Mr. Childan be profitable?” and obtained to my dismay the ominous hexagram The Preponderance of the Great. The ridgepole is sagging. Too much weight in the middle; all unbalanced. Clearly away from the Tao.” The tape recorder whirred.
   Pausing, Mr. Tagomi reflected.
   Miss Ephreikian watched him expectantly. The whirring ceased.
   “Have Mr. Ramsey come in for a moment, please,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   “Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Rising, she put down the tape recorder; her heels tapped as she departed from the office.
   With a large folder of bills-of-lading under his arm, Mr. Ramsey appeared. Young, smiling, he advanced, wearing the natty U.S. Midwest Plains string tie, checkered shirt and tight beltless blue jeans considered so high-place among the style-conscious of the day. “Howdy, Mr. Tagomi,” he said. “Right nice day, sir.”
   Mr. Tagomi bowed.
   At that, Mr. Ramsey stiffened abruptly and also bowed.
   “I’ve been consulting the oracle,” Mr. Tagomi said, as Miss Ephreikian reseated herself with her tape recorder. “You understand that Mr. Baynes, who as you know is arriving shortly in person, holds to the Nordic ideology regarding so-called Oriental culture. I could make the effort to dazzle him into a better comprehension with authentic works of Chinese scroll art or ceramics of our Tokugawa Period… but it is not our job to convert.”
   “I see,” Mr. Ramsey said; his Caucasian face twisted with painful concentration.
   “Therefore we will cater to his prejudice and graft a priceless American artifact to him instead.”
   “Yes.”
   “You, sir, are of American ancestry. Although you have gone to the trouble of darkening your skin color.” He scrutinized Mr. Ramsey.
   “A tan achieved by a sun lamp,” Mr. Ramsey murmured. “For merely acquiring vitamin D.” But his expression of humiliation gave him away. “I assure you that I retain authentic roots with—” Mr. Ramsey stumbled over the words. “I have not cut off all ties with—native ethnic patterns.”
   Mr. Tagomi said to Miss Ephreikian: “Resume, please.” Once more the tape recorder whirred. “In consulting the oracle and obtaining Hexagram Ta Kuo, Twenty-eight, I further received the unfavorable line Nine in the fifth place. It reads:


A withered poplar puts forth flowers.
An older woman takes a husband.
No blame. No praise.


   “This clearly indicates that Mr. Childan will have nothing of worth to offer us at two.” Mr. Tagomi paused. “Let us be candid. I cannot rely on my own judgment regarding American art objects. That is why a—” He lingered over his choice of terms. “Why you, Mr. Ramsey, who are shall I say native born, are required. Obviously we must do the best we can.”
   Mr. Ramsey had no answer. But, despite his efforts to conceal, his features showed hurt, anger, a frustrated and mute reaction.
   “Now,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I have further consulted the oracle. For purposes of policy, I cannot divulge to you, Mr. Ramsey, the question.” In other words, his tone meant, you and your pinoc kind are not entitled to share the important matters which we deal in. “It is sufficient to say, however, that I received a most provocative response. It has caused me to ponder at length.”
   Both Mr. Ramsey and Miss Ephreikian watched him intently.
   “It deals with Mr. Baynes,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   They nodded.
   “My question regarding Mr. Baynes produced through the occult workings of the Tao the Hexagram Sheng, Forty-six. A good judgment. And lines Six at the beginning and Nine in the second place.” His question had been, Will I be able to deal with Mr. Baynes successfully? And the Nine in the second place had assured him that he would. It read:


If one is sincere,
It furthers one to bring even a small offering.
No blame.


   Obviously, Mr. Baynes would be satisfied by whatever gift the ranking Trade Mission grafted to him through the good offices of Mr. Tagomi. But Mr. Tagomi, in asking the question, had had a deeper query in the back of his mind, one of which he was barely conscious. As so often, the oracle had perceived that more fundamental query and; while answering the other, had taken it upon itself to answer the subliminal one, too.
   “As we know,” Mr. Tagomi said, “Mr. Baynes is bringing us detailed account of new injection molds developed in Sweden. Were we successfully to sign agreement with his firm, we could no doubt replace many present metals, quite scarce, with plastics.”
   For years, the Pacific had been trying to get basic assistance in the synthetics field from the Reich. However, the big German chemical cartels, I. G. Farben in particular, had harbored their patents; had, in fact, created a world monopoly in plastics, especially in the development of the polyesters. By this means, Reich trade had kept an edge over Pacific trade, and in technology the Reich was at least ten years ahead. The interplanetary rockets leaving Festung Europa consisted mainly of heat-resistant plastics, very light in weight, so hard that they survived even major meteor impact. The Pacific had nothing of this sort; natural fibers such as wood were still used, and of course the ubiquitous pot metals. Mr. Tagomi cringed as he thought about it; he had seen at trade fairs some of the advanced German work, including an all-synthetic automobile, the D. S. S.—Der Schnelle Spuk– which sold, in PSA currency, for about six hundred dollars.
   But his underlying question, one which he could never reveal to the pinocs flitting about Trade Mission offices, had to do with an aspect of Mr. Baynes suggested by the original coded cable from Tokyo. First of all, coded material was infrequent, and dealt usually with matters of security, not with trade deals. And the cipher was the metaphor type, utilizing poetic allusion, which had been adopted to baffle the Reich monitors—who could crack any literal code, no matter how elaborate. So clearly it was the Reich whom the Tokyo authorities had in mind, not quasi-disloyal cliques in the Home Islands. The key phrase, “Skim milk in his diet,” referred to Pinafore, to the eerie song that expounded the doctrine, “…Things are seldom what they seem—Skim milk masquerades as cream.” And the I Ching, when Mr. Tagomi had consulted it, had fortified his insight. Its commentary:


   Here a strong man is presupposed. It is true he does not fit in with his environment, inasmuch as he is too brusque and pays too little attention to form. But as he is upright in character, he meets with response…


   The insight was, simply, that Mr. Baynes was not what he seemed; that his actual purpose in coming to San Francisco was not to sign a deal for injection molds. That, in fact, Mr. Baynes was a spy.
   But for the life of him, Mr. Tagomi could not figure out what sort of spy, for whom or for what.

   At one-forty that afternoon, Robert Childan with enormous reluctance locked the front door of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. He lugged his heavy cases to the curb, hailed a pedecab, and told the chink to take him to the Nippon Times Building.
   The chink, gaunt-faced, hunched over and perspiring, gasped a place-conscious acknowledgment and began loading Mr. Childan’s bags aboard. Then, having assisted Mr. Childan himself into the carpet-lined seat, the chink clicked on the meter, mounted his own seat and pedaled off along Montgomery Street, among the cars and buses.
   The entire day had been spent finding the item for Mr. Tagomi, and Childan’s bitterness and anxiety almost overwhelmed him as he watched the buildings pass. And yet—triumph. The separate skill, apart from the rest of him: he had found the right thing, and Mr. Tagomi would be mollified and his client, whoever he was, would be overjoyed. I always give satisfaction, Childan thought. To my customers.
   He had been able to procure, miraculously, an almost mint copy of Volume One, Number One of Tip Top Comics. Dating from the ‘thirties, it was a choice piece of Americana; one of the first funny books, a prize collectors searched for constantly. Of course, he had other items with him, to show first. He would lead up gradually to the funny book, which lay well-protected in a leather case packed in tissue paper at the center of the largest bag.
   The radio of the pedecab blared out popular tunes, competing with the radios of other cabs, cars and buses. Childan did not hear; he was used to it. Nor did he take notice of the enormous neon signs with their permanent ads obliterating the front of virtually every large building. After all, he had his own sign; at night it blazed on and off in company with all the others of the city. What other way did one advertise? One had to be realistic.
   In fact, the uproar of radios, traffic noises, the signs and people lulled him. They blotted out his inner worries. And it was pleasurable to be peddled along by another human being, to feel the straining muscles of the chink transmitted in the form of regular vibrations; a sort of relaxing machine, Childan reflected. To be pulled instead of having to pull. And—to have, if even for a moment, higher place.
   Guiltily, he woke himself. Too much to plan; no time for a midday doze. Was he absolutely properly dressed to enter the Nippon Times Building? Possibly he would faint in the high-speed elevator. But he had motion-illness tablets with him, a German compound. The various modes of address… he knew them. Whom to treat politely, whom rudely. Be brusque with the doorman, elevator operator, receptionist, guide, any janitorial person. Bow to any Japanese, of course, even if it obliged him to bow hundreds of times. But the pinocs. Nebulous area. Bow, but look straight through them as if they did not exist. Did that cover every situation, then? What about a visiting foreigner? Germans often could be seen at the Trade Missions, as well as neutrals.
   And then, too, he might see a slave.
   German or South ships docked at the port of San Francisco all the time, and blacks occasionally were allowed off for short intervals. Always in groups of fewer than three. And they could not be out after nightfall; even under Pacific law, they had to obey the curfew. But also slaves unloaded at the docks, and these lived perpetually ashore, in shacks under the wharves, above the waterline. None would be in the Trade Mission offices, but if any unloading were taking place—for instance, should he carry his own bags to Mr. Tagomi’s office? Surely not. A slave would have to be found, even if he had to stand waiting an hour. Even if he missed his appointment. It was out of the question to let a slave see him carrying something; he had to be quite careful of that. A mistake of that kind would cost him dearly; he would never have place of any sort again, among those who saw.
   In a way, Childan thought, I would almost enjoy carrying my own bags into the Nippon Times Building in broad daylight. What a grand gesture. It is not actually illegal; I would not go to jail. And I would show my real feelings, the side of a man which never comes out in public life. But…
   I could do it, he thought, if there weren’t those damn black slaves lurking around; I could endure those above me seeing it, their scorn—after all, they scorn me and humiliate me every day. But to have those beneath see me, to feel their contempt. Like this chink peddling away ahead of me. If I hadn’t taken a pedecab, if he had seen me trying to walk to a business appointment…
   One had to blame the Germans for the situation. Tendency to bite off more than they could chew. After all, they had barely managed to win the war, and at once they had gone off to conquer the solar system, while at home they had passed edicts which… well, at least the idea was good. And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students. And the Slavs had been rolled back two thousand years’ worth, to their heartland in Asia. Out of Europe entirely, to everyone’s relief. Back to riding yaks and hunting with bow and arrow. And those great glossy magazines printed in Munich and circulated around to all the libraries and newsstands… one could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn’t see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts.
   But Africa. They had simply let their enthusiasm get the better of them there, and you had to admire that, although more thoughtful advice would have cautioned them to perhaps let it wait a bit until, for instance, Project Farmland had been completed. Now there the Nazis had shown genius; the artist in them had truly emerged. The Mediterranean Sea bottled up, drained, made into tillable farmland, through the use of atomic power—what daring! How the sniggerers had been set back on their heels, for instance certain scoffing merchants along Montgomery Street. And as a matter of fact, Africa had almost been successful… but in a project of that sort, almost was an ominous word to begin to hear. Rosenberg’s well-known powerful pamphlet issued in 1958; the word had first shown up, then. As to the Final Solution of the African Problem, we have almost achieved our objectives. Unfortunately, however—
   Still, it had taken two hundred years to dispose of the American aborigines, and Germany had almost done it in Africa in fifteen years. So no criticism was legitimately in order. Childan had, in fact, argued it out recently while having lunch with certain of those other merchants. They expected miracles, evidently, as if the Nazis could remold the world by magic. No, it was science and technology and that fabulous talent for hard work; the Germans never stopped applying themselves. And when they did a task, they did it right.
   And anyhow, the flights to Mars had distracted world attention from the difficulty in Africa. So it all came back to what he had told his fellow store owners; what the Nazis have which we lack is—nobility. Admire them for their love of work or their efficiency… but it’s the dream that stirs one. Space flights first to the moon, then to Mars; if that isn’t the oldest yearning of mankind, our finest hope for glory. Now, the Japanese on the other hand. I know them pretty well; I do business with them, after all, day in and day out. They are—let’s face it—Orientals. Yellow people. We whites have to bow to them because they hold the power. But we watch Germany; we see what can be done where whites have conquered, and it’s quite different.
   “We approach the Nippon Times Building, sir,” the chink said, his chest heaving from the exertion of the hill climbing. He slowed, now.
   To himself, Childan tried to picture Mr. Tagomi’s client. Clearly the man was unusually important; Mr. Tagomi’s tone on the telephone, his immense agitation, had communicated the fact. Image of one of Childan’s own very important clients, or rather, customers, swam up into his mind, a man who had done a good deal to create for Childan a reputation among the high-placed personages residing in the Bay Area.
   Four years ago, Childan had not been the dealer in the rare and desirable which he was now; he had operated a small rather dimly lighted secondhand bookshop on Geary. His neighboring stores sold used furniture, or hardware, or did laundry. It was not a nice neighborhood. At night strong-arm robberies and sometimes rape took place on the sidewalk, despite the efforts of the San Francisco Police Department and even the Kempeitai, the Japanese higher-ups. All store windows had iron gratings fitted over them once the business day had ended, this to prevent forcible entry. Yet, into this district of the city had come an elderly Japanese ex-Army man, a Major Ito Humo. Tall, slender, white-haired, walking and standing stiffly, Major Humo had given Childan his first inkling of what might be done with his line of merchandise.
   “I am a collector,” Major Humo had explained. He had spent an entire afternoon searching among the heaps of old magazines in the store. In his mild voice he had explained something which Childan could not quite grasp at the time: to many wealthy, cultured Japanese, the historic objects of American popular civilization were of equal interest alongside the more formal antiques. Why this was so, the major himself did not know; he was particularly addicted to the collecting of old magazines dealing with U.S. brass buttons, well as the buttons themselves. It was on the order of coin or stamp collecting; no rational explanation could ever be given. And high prices were being paid by wealthy collectors.
   “I will give you an example,” the major had said. “Do you know what is meant by ‘Horrors of War’ cards?” He had eyed Childan with avidity.
   Searching his memory, Childan had at last recalled. The cards had been dispensed, during his childhood, with bubble gum. A cent apiece. There had been a series of them, each card depicting a different horror.
   “A dear friend of mine,” the major had gone on, “collects ‘Horrors of War.’ He lacks but one, now. The Sinking of the Panay. He has offered a substantial sum of money for that particular card.”
   “Flip cards,” Childan had said suddenly.
   “Sir?”
   “We flipped them. There was a head and a tail side on each card.” He had been about eight years old. “Each of us had a pack of flip cards. We stood, two of us, facing each other. Each of us dropped a card so that it flipped in the air. The boy whose card landed with the head side up, the side with the picture, won both cards.” How enjoyable to recall those good days, those early happy days of his childhood.
   Considering, Major Humo had said, “I have heard my friend discuss his ‘Horrors of War’ cards, and he has never mentioned this. It is my opinion that he does not know how these cards actually were put to use.”
   Eventually, the major’s friend had shown up at the store to hear Childan’s historically firsthand account. That man, also a retired officer of the Imperial Army, had been fascinated.
   “Bottle caps!” Childan had exclaimed without warning.
   The Japanese had blinked uncomprehendingly.
   “We used to collect the tops from milk bottles. As kids. The round tops that gave the name of the dairy. There must have been thousands of dairies in the United States. Each one printed a special top.”
   The officer’s eyes had glinted with the instinct. “Do you possess any of your sometime collection, sir?”
   Naturally, Childan did not. But… probably it was still possible to obtain the ancient, long-forgotten tops from the days before the war when milk had come in glass bottles rather than throwaway pasteboard cartons.
   And so, by stages, he had gotten into the business. Others had opened similar places, taking advantage of the evergrowing Japanese craze for Americana… but Childan had always kept his edge.
   “Your fare,” the chink was saying, bringing him out of his meditation, “is a dollar, sir.” He had unloaded the bags and was waiting.
   Absentmindedly, Childan paid him. Yes, it was quite likely that the client of Mr. Tagomi resembled Major Humo; at least, Childan thought tartly, from my point of view. He had dealt with so many Japanese… but he still had difficulty telling them apart. There were the short squat ones, built like wrestlers. Then the druggist-like ones. The tree-shrubflower-gardener ones… he had his categories. And the young ones, who were to him not like Japanese at all. Mr. Tagomi’s client would probably be portly, a businessman, smoking a Philippine cigar.
   And then, standing before the Nippon Times Building, with his bags on the sidewalk beside him, Childan suddenly thought with a chill: Suppose his client isn’t Japanese! Everything in the bags had been selected with them in mind, their tastes—
   But the man had to be Japanese. A Civil War recruiting poster had been Mr. Tagomi’s original order; surely only a Japanese would care about such debris. Typical of their mania for the trivial, their legalistic fascination with documents, proclamations, ads. He remembered one who had devoted his leisure time to collecting newspaper ads of American patent medicines of the 1900s.
   There were other problems to face. Immediate problems. Through the high doors of the Nippon Times Building men and women hurried, all of them well-dressed; their voices reached Childan’s ears, and he started into motion. A glance upward at the towering edifice, the highest building in San Francisco. Wall of offices, windows, the fabulous design of the Japanese architects—and the surrounding gardens of dwarf evergreens, rocks, the karesansui landscape, sand imitating a dried-up stream winding past roots, among simple, irregular flat stones…
   He saw a black who had carried baggage, now free. At once Childan called, “Porter!”
   The black trotted toward him, smiling.
   “To the twentieth floor,” Childan said in his harshest voice. “Suite B. At once.” He indicated the bags and then strode on toward the doors of the building. Naturally he did not look back.
   A moment later he found himself being crowded into one of the express elevators; mostly Japanese around him, their clean faces shining slightly in the brilliant light of the elevator. Then the nauseating upward thrust of the elevator, the rapid click of floors passing; he shut his eyes, planted his feet firmly, prayed for the flight to end. The black, of course, had taken the bags up on a service elevator. It would not have been within the realm of reason to permit him here. In fact—Childan opened his eyes and looked momentarily—he was one of the few whites in the elevator.
   When the elevator let him off on the twentieth floor, Childan was already bowing mentally, preparing himself for the encounter in Mr. Tagomi’s offices.

3

   At sunset, glancing up, Juliana Frink saw the dot of light in the sky shoot in an arc, disappear to the west. One of those Nazi rocket ships, she said to herself. Flying to the Coast. Full of big shots. And here I am down below. She waved, although the rocket ship of course had already gone.
   Shadows advancing from the Rockies. Blue peaks turning to night. A flock of slow birds, migratory, made their way parallel with the mountains. Here and there a car turned its headlights on; she saw the twin dots along the highway. Lights, too, of a gas station. Houses.
   For months now she had been living here in Canon City, Colorado. She was a judo instructor.
   Her workday had ended and she was preparing to take a shower. She felt tired. All the showers were in use, by customers of Ray’s Gym, so she had been standing, waiting outdoors in the coolness, enjoying the smell of mountain air, the quiet. All she heard now was the faint murmur from the hamburger stand down the road by the highway’s edge. Two huge diesel trucks had parked, and the drivers, in the gloom, could be seen moving about, putting on their leather jackets before entering the hamburger stand.
   She thought: Didn’t Diesel throw himself out the window of his stateroom? Commit suicide by drowning himself on an ocean voyage? Maybe I ought to do that. But here there was no ocean. But there is always a way. Like in Shakespeare. A pin stuck through one’s shirt front, and good-bye Frink. The girl who need not fear marauding homeless from the desert. Walks upright in consciousness of many pinched-nerve possibilities in grizzled salivating adversary. Death instead by, say, sniffing car exhaust in highway town, perhaps through long hollow straw.
   Learned that, she thought, from Japanese. Imbibed placid attitude toward mortality, along with money-making judo. How to kill, how to die. Yang and yin. But that’s behind, now; this is Protestant land.
   It was a good thing to see the Nazi rockets go by overhead and not stop, not take any interest of any sort in Canon City, Colorado. Nor in Utah or Wyoming or the eastern part of Nevada, none of the open empty desert states or pasture states. We have no value, she said to herself. We can live out our tiny lives. If we want to. If it matters to us.
   From one of the showers, the noise of a door unlocking. A shape, large Miss Davis, finished with her shower, dressed, purse under her arm. “Oh, were you waiting, Mrs. Frink? I’m sorry.”
   “It’s all right,” Juliana said.
   “You know, Mrs. Frink, I’ve gotten so much out of judo. Even more than out of Zen. I wanted to tell you.”
   “Slim your hips the Zen way,” Juliana said. “Lose pounds through painless satori. I’m sorry, Miss Davis. I’m woolgathering.”
   Miss Davis said, “Did they hurt you much?”
   “Who?”
   “The Japs. Before you learned to defend yourself.”
   “It was dreadful,” Juliana said. “You’ve never been out there, on the Coast. Where they are.”
   “I’ve never been outside of Colorado,” Miss Davis said, her voice fluttering timidly.
   “It could happen here,” Juliana said. “They might decide to occupy this region, too.”
   “Not this late!”
   “You never know what they’re going to do,” Juliana said. “They hide their real thoughts.”
   “What—did they make you do?” Miss Davis, hugging her purse against her body with both arms, moved closer, in the evening darkness, to hear.
   “Everything,” Juliana said.
   “Oh God. I’d fight,” Miss Davis said.
   Juliana excused herself and walked to the vacant shower; someone else was approaching it with a towel over her arm.
   Later, she sat in a booth at Tasty Charley’s Broiled Hamburgers, listlessly reading the menu. The jukebox played some hillbilly tune; steel guitar and emotion-choked moaning… the air was heavy with grease smoke. And yet, the place was warm and bright, and it cheered her. The presence of the truck drivers at the counter, the waitress, the big Irish fry cook in his white jacket at the register making change.
   Seeing her, Charley approached to wait on her himself. Grinning, he drawled, “Missy want tea now?”
   “Coffee,” Juliana said, enduring the fry cook’s relentless humor.
   “Ah so,” Charley said, nodding.
   “And the hot steak sandwich with gravy.”
   “Not have bowl rat’s-nest soup? Or maybe goat brains fried in olive oil?” A couple of the truck drivers, turning on their stools, grinned along with the gag, too. And in addition they took pleasure in noticing how attractive she was. Even lacking the fry cook’s kidding, she would have found the truck drivers scrutinizing her. The months of active judo had given her unusual muscle tone; she knew how well she held herself and what it did for her figure.
   It all has to do with the shoulder muscles, she thought as she met their gaze. Dancers do it, too. It has nothing to do with size. Send your wives around to the gym and we’ll teach them. And you’ll be so much more content in life.
   “Stay away from her,” the fry cook warned the truck drivers with a wink. “She’ll throw you on your can.”
   She said to the younger of the truck drivers, “Where are you in from?”
   “Missouri,” both men said.
   “Are you from the United States?” she asked.
   “I am,” the older man said. “Philadelphia. Got three kids there. The oldest is eleven.”
   “Listen,” Juliana said. “Is it—easy to get a good job back there?”
   The younger truck driver said, “Sure. If you have the right color skin.” He himself had a dark brooding face with curly black hair. His expression had become set and bitter.
   “He’s a wop,” the older man said.
   “Well,” Juliana said, “didn’t Italy win the war?” She smiled at the young truck driver but he did not smile back. Instead, his somber eyes glowed even more intensely, and suddenly he turned away.
   I’m sorry, she thought. But she said nothing. I can’t save you or anybody else from being dark. She thought of Frank. I wonder if he’s dead yet. Said the wrong thing; spoke out of line. No, she thought. Somehow he likes Japs. Maybe he identifies with them because they’re ugly. She had always told Frank that he was ugly. Large pores. Big nose. Her own skin was finely knit, unusually so. Did he fall dead without me? A fink is a finch, a form of bird. And they say birds die.
   “Are you going back on the road tonight?” she asked the young Italian truck driver.
   “Tomorrow.”
   “If you’re not happy in the U.S. why don’t you cross over permanently?” she said. “I’ve been living in the Rockies for a long time and it isn’t so bad. I lived on the Coast, in San Francisco. They have the skin thing there, too.”
   Glancing briefly at her as he sat hunched at the counter, the young Italian said, “Lady, it’s bad enough to have to spend one day or one night in a town like this. Live here? Christ—if I could get any other kind of job, and not have to be on the road eating my meals in places like this—” Noticing that the fry cook was red, he ceased speaking and began to drink his coffee.
   The older truck driver said to him, “Joe, you’re a snob.”
   “You could live in Denver,” Juliana said. “It’s nicer up there.” I know you East Americans, she thought. You like the big time. Dreaming your big schemes. This is just the sticks to you, the Rockies. Nothing has happened here since before the war. Retired old people, farmers, the stupid, slow, poor… and all the smart boys have flocked east to New York, crossed the border legally or illegally. Because, she thought, that’s where the money is, the big industrial money. The expansion. German investment has done a lot… it didn’t take long for them to build the U.S. back up.
   The fry cook said in a hoarse angry voice, “Buddy, I’m not a Jew-lover, but I seen some of those Jew refugees fleeing your U.S. in ‘49, and you can have your U.S. If there’s a lot of building back there and a lot of loose easy money it’s because they stole it from those Jews when they kicked them out of New York, that goddam Nazi Nuremberg Law. I lived in Boston when I was a kid, and I got no special use for Jews, but I never thought I’d see that Nazi racial law get passed in the U.S., even if we did lose the war. I’m surprised you aren’t in the U.S. Armed Forces, getting ready to invade some little South American republic as a front for the Germans, so they can push the Japanese back a little bit more—”
   Both truck drivers were on their feet, their faces stark. The older man picked up a ketchup bottle from the counter and held it upright by the neck. The fry cook without turning his back to the two men reached behind him until his fingers touched one of his meat forks. He brought the fork out and held it.
   Juliana said, “Denver is getting one of those heat-resistant runways so that Lufthansa rockets can land there.”
   None of the three men moved or spoke. The other customers sat silently.
   Finally the fry cook said, “One flew over around sundown.”
   “It wasn’t going to Denver,” Juliana said. “It was going west, to the Coast.”
   By degrees, the two truck drivers reseated themselves. The older man mumbled, “I always forget; they’re a little yellow out here.”
   The fry cook said. “No Japs killed Jews, in the war or after. No Japs built ovens.”
   “Too bad they didn’t,” the older truck driver said. But, picking up his coffee cup, he resumed eating.
   Yellow, Juliana thought. Yes, I suppose it’s true. We love the Japs out here.
   “Where are you staying?” she asked, speaking to the young truck driver, Joe. “Overnight.”
   “I don’t know,” he answered. “I just got out of the truck to come in here. I don’t like this whole state. Maybe I’ll sleep in the truck.”
   “The Honey Bee Motel isn’t too bad,” the fry cook said.
   “Okay,” the young truck driver said. “Maybe I’ll stay there. If they don’t mind me being Italian.” He had a definite accent, although he tried to hide it.
   Watching him, Juliana thought, it’s idealism that makes him that bitter. Asking too much out of life. Always moving on, restless and griped. I’m the same way; I couldn’t stay on the West Coast and eventually I won’t be able to stand it here. Weren’t the old-timers like that? But, she thought, now the frontier isn’t here; it’s the other planets.
   She thought: He and I could sign up for one of those colonizing rocket ships. But the Germans would disbar him because of his skin and me because of my dark hair. Those pale skinny Nordic SS fairies in those training castles in Bavaria. This guy—Joe whatever—hasn’t even got the right expression on his face; he should have that cold but somehow enthusiastic look, as if he believed in nothing and yet somehow had absolute faith. Yes, that’s how they are. They’re not idealists like Joe and me; they’re cynics with utter faith. It’s a sort of brain defect, like a lobotomy—that maiming those German psychiatrists do as a poor substitute for psychotherapy.
   Their trouble, she decided, is with sex; they did something foul with it back in the ‘thirties, and it has gotten worse. Hitler started it with his—what was she? His sister? Aunt? Niece? And his family was inbred already; his mother and father were cousins. They’re all committing incest, going back to the original sin of lusting for their own mothers. That’s why they, those elite SS fairies, have that angelic simper, that blond babylike innocence; they’re saving themselves for Mama. Or for each other.
   And who is Mama for them? she wondered. The leader, Herr Bormann, who is supposed to be dying? Or—the Sick One.
   Old Adolf, supposed to be in a sanitarium somewhere, living out his life of senile paresis. Syphilis of the brain, dating back to his poor days as a bum in Vienna… long black coat, dirty underwear, flophouses.
   Obviously, it was God’s sardonic vengeance, right out of some silent movie. That awful man struck down by an internal filth, the historic plague for man’s wickedness.
   And the horrible part was that the present-day German Empire was a product of that brain. First a political party, then a nation, then half the world. And the Nazis themselves had diagnosed it, identified it; that quack herbal medicine man who had treated Hitler, that Dr. Morell who had dosed Hitler with a patent medicine called Dr. Koester’s Antigas Pills—he had originally been a specialist in venereal disease. The entire world knew it, and yet the Leader’s gabble was still sacred, still Holy Writ. The views had infected a civilization by now, and, like evil spores, the blind blond Nazi queens were swishing out from Earth to the other planets, spreading the contamination.
   What you get for incest: madness, blindness, death.
   Brrr. She shook herself.
   “Charley,” she called to the fry cook. “You about ready with my order?” She felt absolutely alone; getting to her feet she walked to the counter and seated herself by the register.
   No one noticed her except the young Italian truck driver; his dark eyes were fixed on her. Joe, his name was. Joe what? she wondered.
   Closer to him, now, she saw that he was not as young as she had thought. Hard to tell; the intensity all around him disturbed her judgment. Continually he drew his hand through his hair, combing it back with crooked, rigid fingers. There’s something special about this man, she thought. He breathes—death. It upset her, and yet attracted her. Now the older truck driver inclined his head and whispered to him. Then they both scrutinized her, this time with a look that was not the ordinary male interest.
   “Miss,” the older one said. Both men were quite tense, now. “Do you know what this is?” He held up a flat white box, not too large.
   “Yes,” Juliana said. “Nylon stockings. Synthetic fiber made only by the great cartel in New York, I. G. Farben. Very rare and expensive.”
   “You got to hand it to the Germans; monopoly’s not a bad idea.” The older truck driver passed the box to his companion, who pushed it with his elbow along the counter toward her.
   “You have a car?” the young Italian asked her, sipping his coffee.
   From the kitchen, Charley appeared; he had her plate.
   “You could drive me to this place.” The wild, strong eyes still studied her, and she became increasingly nervous, and yet increasingly transfixed. “This motel, or wherever I’m supposed to stay tonight. Isn’t that so?”
   “Yes,” she said. “I have a car. An old Studebaker.”
   The fry cook glanced from her to the young truck driver, and then set her plate before her at the counter.

   The loudspeaker at the end of the aisle said, “Achtung, meine Damen und Herren.” In his seat, Mr. Baynes started, opened his eyes. Through the window to his right he could see, far below, the brown and green of land, and then blue. The Pacific. The rocket, he realized, had begun its long slow descent.
   In German first, then Japanese, and at last English, the loudspeaker explained that no one was to smoke or to untie himself from his padded seat. The descent, it explained, would take eight minutes.
   The retro-jets started then, so suddenly and loudly, shaking the ship so violently, that a number of passengers gasped. Mr. Baynes smiled, and in the aisle seat across from him, another passenger, a younger man with close-cropped blond hair, also smiled.
   “Sie furchten dass—” the young man began, but Mr. Baynes said at once, in English:
   “I’m sorry; I don’t speak German.” The young German gazed at him questioningly, and so he said the same thing in German.
   “No German?” the young German said, amazed, in accented English.
   “I am Swedish,” Baynes said.
   “You embarked at Tempelhof.”
   “Yes, I was in Germany on business. My business carries me to a number of countries.”
   Clearly, the young German could not believe that anyone in the modern world, anyone who had international business dealings and rode—could afford to ride—on the latest Lufthansa rocket, could or would not speak German. To Baynes he said, “What line are you in, mein Herr?”
   “Plastics. Polyesters. Resins. Ersatz—industrial uses. Do you see? No consumers’ commodities.”
   “Sweden has a plastics industry?” Disbelief.
   “Yes, a very good one. If you will give me your name I will have a firm brochure mailed to you.” Mr. Baynes brought out his pen and pad.
   “Never mind. It would be wasted on me. I am an artist, not a commercial man. No offense. Possibly you have seen my work while on the Continent. Alex Lotze.” He waited.
   “Afraid I do not care for modern art,” Mr. Baynes said. “I like the old prewar cubists and abstractionists. I like a picture to mean something, not merely to represent the ideal.” He turned away.
   “But that’s the task of art,” Lotze said. “To advance the spirituality of man, over the sensual. Your abstract art represented a period of spiritual decadence, of spiritual chaos, due to the disintegration of society, the old plutocracy. The Jewish and capitalist millionaires, the international set that supported the decadent art. Those times are over; art has to—go on—it can’t stay still.”
   Baynes nodded, gazing out the window.
   “Have you been to the Pacific before?” Lotze asked.
   “Several times.”
   “Not I. There is an exhibition in San Francisco of my work, arranged by Dr. Goebbels’ office, with the Japanese authorities. A cultural exchange to promote understanding and goodwill. We must ease tensions between the East and West, don’t you think? We must have more communication, and art can do that.”
   Baynes nodded. Below, beyond the ring of fire from the rocket, the city of San Francisco and the Bay could now be seen.
   “Where does one eat in San Francisco?” Lotze was saying. “I have reservations at the Palace Hotel, but my understanding is that one can find good food in the international section, such as the Chinatown.”
   “True,” Baynes said.
   “Are prices high in San Francisco? I am out of pocket for this trip. The Ministry is very frugal.” Lotze laughed.
   “Depends on the exchange rate you can manage. I presume you’re carrying Reichsbank drafts. I suggest you go to the Bank of Tokyo on Samson Street and exchange there.”
   “Danke sehr,” Lotze said. “I would have done it at the hotel.”
   The rocket had almost reached the ground. Now Baynes could see the airfield itself, hangars, parking lots, the autobahn from the city, the houses… very lovely view, he thought. Mountains and water, and a few bits of fog drifting in at the Golden Gate.
   “What is that enormous structure below?” Lotze asked. “It is half-finished, open at one side. A spaceport? The Nipponese have no spacecraft, I thought.”
   With a smile, Baynes said, “That’s Golden Poppy Stadium. The baseball park.”
   Lotze laughed. “Yes, they love baseball. Incredible. They have begun work on that great structure for a pastime, an idle time-wasting sport—”
   Interrupting, Baynes said, “It is finished. That’s its permanent shape. Open on one side. A new architectural design. They are very proud of it.”
   “It looks,” Lotze said, gazing down, “as if it was designed by a Jew.”
   Baynes regarded the man for a time. He felt, strongly for a moment, the unbalanced quality, the psychotic streak, in the German mind. Did Lotze actually mean what he said? Was it a truly spontaneous remark?
   “I hope we will see one another later on in San Francisco,” Lotze said as the rocket touched the ground. “I will be at loose ends without a countryman to talk to.”
   “I’m not a countryman of yours,” Baynes said.
   “Oh, yes; that’s so. But racially, you’re quite close. For all intents and purposes the same.” Lotze began to stir around in his seat, getting ready to unfasten the elaborate belts.
   Am I racially kin to this man? Baynes wondered. So closely so that for all intents and purposes it is the same? Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And—how many of us do know it? Not Lotze. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses… what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth… ?
   But, he thought, what does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it?
   He thought, It is something they do, something they are. It is—their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. No, he thought. That isn’t it, I don’t know; I sense it, intuit it. But—they are purposely cruel … is that it? No. God, he thought. I can’t find it, make it clear. Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans. The conquering of the planets. Something frenzied and demented, as was their conquering of Africa, and before that, Europe and Asia.
   Their view; it is cosmic. Not of a man here, a child there, but air abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Güte, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they—these madmen—respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur.
   And, he thought, I know why. They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God’s power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. It is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man.
   What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn’t it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small… and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
   As he unfastened his own belt, Baynes said, “Mr. Lotze, I have never told anyone this. I am a Jew. Do you understand?”
   Lotze stared at him piteously.
   “You would not have known,” Baynes said, “because I do not in any physical way appear Jewish; I have had my nose altered, my large greasy pores made smaller, my skin chemically lightened, the shape of my skull changed. In short, physically I cannot be detected. I can and have often walked in the highest circles of Nazi society. No one will ever discover me. And—” He paused, standing close, very close to Lotze and speaking in a low voice which only Lotze could hear. “And there are others of us. Do you hear? We did not die. We still exist. We live on unseen.”
   After a moment Lotze stuttered, “The Security Police—”
   “The SD can go over my record,” Baynes said. “You can report me. But I have very high connections. Some of them are Aryan, some are other Jews in top positions in Berlin. Your report will be discounted, and then, presently, I will report you. And through these same connections, you will find yourself in Protective Custody.” He smiled, nodded and walked up the aisle of the ship, away from Lotze, to join the other passengers.
   Everyone descended the ramp, onto the cold, windy field. At the bottom, Baynes found himself once more momentarily near Lotze.
   “In fact,” Baynes said, walking beside Lotze, “I do not like your looks, Mr. Lotze, so I think I will report you anyhow.” He strode on, then, leaving Lotze behind.
   At the far end of the field, at the concourse entrance, a large number of people were waiting. Relatives, friends of passengers, some of them waving, peering, smiling, looking anxious, scanning faces. A heavyset middle-aged Japanese man, well-dressed in a British overcoat, pointed Oxfords, bowler, stood a little ahead of the others, with a younger Japanese beside him. On his coat lapel he wore the badge of the ranking Pacific Trade Mission of the Imperial Government. There he is, Baynes realized. Mr. N. Tagomi, come personally to meet me.
   Starting forward, the Japanese called, “Herr Baynes—good evening.” His head tilted hesitantly.
   “Good evening, Mr. Tagomi,” Baynes said, holding out his hand. They shook, then bowed. The younger Japanese also bowed, beaming.
   “Bit cold, sir; on this exposed field,” Mr. Tagomi said. “We shall begin return trip to downtown city by Mission helicopter. Is that so? Or do you need to use the facilities, and so forth?” He scrutinized Mr. Baynes’ face anxiously.
   “We can start right now,” Baynes said. “I want to check in at my hotel. My baggage, however—”
   “Mr. Kotomichi will attend to that,” Mr. Tagomi said. “He will follow. You see, sir, at this terminal it takes almost an hour waiting in line to claim baggage. Longer than your trip.”
   Mr. Kotomichi smiled agreeably.
   “All right,” Baynes said.
   Mr. Tagomi said, “Sir, I have a gift to graft.”
   “I beg your pardon?” Baynes said.
   “To invite your favorable attitude.” Mr. Tagomi reached into his overcoat pocket and brought out a small box. “Selected from among the finest objects d’art of America available.” He held out the box.
   “Well,” Baynes said. “Thanks.” He accepted the box.
   “All afternoon assorted officials examined the alternatives,” Mr. Tagomi said. “This is most authentic of dying old U.S. culture, a rare retained artifact carrying flavor of bygone halcyon day.”
   Mr. Baynes opened the box. In it lay a Mickey Mouse wristwatch on a pad of black velvet.
   Was Mr. Tagomi playing a joke on him? He raised his eyes, saw Mr. Tagomi’s tense, concerned face. No, it was not a joke. “Thank you very much,” Baynes said. “This is indeed incredible.”
   “Only few, perhaps ten, authentic 1938 Mickey Mouse watches in all world today,” Mr. Tagomi said, studying him, drinking in his reaction, his appreciation. “No collector known to me has one, sir.”
   They entered the air terminal and together ascended the ramp.
   Behind them Mr. Kotomichi said, “Harusame ni nuretsutsu yane no temari kana…”
   “What is that?” Mr. Baynes said to Mr. Tagomi.
   “Old poem,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Middle Tokugawa Period.”
   Mr. Kotomichi said, “As the spring rains fall, soaking in them, on the roof, is a child’s rag ball.”

4

   As Frank Frink watched his ex-employer waddle down the corridor and into the main work area of W-M Corporation he thought to himself, The strange thing about Wyndam-Matson is that he does not look like a man who owns a factory. He looks like a Tenderloin bum, a wino, who has been given a bath, new clothes, a shave, haircut, shot of vitamins, and set out into the world with five dollars to find a new life. The old man had a weak, shifty, nervous, even ingratiating manner, as if he regarded everyone as a potential enemy stronger than he, whom he had to fawn on and pacify. “They’re going to get me,” his manner seemed to say.
   And yet old W-M was really very powerful. He owned controlling interests in a variety of enterprises, speculations, real estate. As well as the W-M Corporation factory.
   Following after the old man, Frink pushed open the big metal door to the main work area. The rumble of machinery, which he had heard around him every day for so long—sight of men at the machines, air filled with flash of light, waste dust, movement. There went the old man. Frink increased his pace.
   “Hey, Mr. W-M!” he called.
   The old man had stopped by the hairy-armed shop foreman, Ed McCarthy. Both of them glanced up as Frink came toward them.
   Moistening his lips nervously, Wyndam-Matson said, “I’m sorry, Frank; I can’t do anything about taking you back. I’ve already gone ahead and hired someone to take your place, thinking you weren’t coming back. After what you said.” His small round eyes flickered with what Frink knew to be an almost hereditary evasiveness. It was in the old man’s blood.
   Frink said, “I came for my tools. Nothing else.” His own voice, he was glad to hear, was firm, even harsh.
   “Well, let’s see,” W-M mumbled, obviously hazy in his own mind as to the status of Frink’s tools. To Ed McCarthy he said, “I think that would be in your department, Ed. Maybe you can fix Frank here up. I have other business.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “Listen, Ed. I’ll discuss that invoice later; I have to run along.” He patted Ed McCarthy on the arm and then trotted off, not looking back.
   Ed McCarthy and Frink stood together.
   “You came to get your job back,” McCarthy said after a time.
   “Yes,” Frink said.
   “I was proud of what you said yesterday.”
   “So was I,” Frink said. “But—Christ, I can’t work it out anywhere else.” He felt defeated and hopeless. “You know that.” The two of them had, in the past, often talked over their problems.
   McCarthy said, “I don’t know that. You”re as good with that flex-cable machine as anybody on the Coast. I’ve seen you whip out a piece in five minutes, including the rouge polishing. All the way from the rough Cratex. And except for the welding—”
   “I never said I could weld,” Frink said.
   “Did you ever think of going into business on your own?”
   Frink, taken by surprise, stammered, “What doing?”
   “Jewelry.”
   “Aw, for Christ’s sake!”
   “Custom, original pieces, not commercial.” McCarthy beckoned him over to a corner of the shop, away from the noise. “For about two thousand bucks you could set up a little basement or garage shop. One time I drew up designs for women’s earrings and pendants. You remember—real modern contemporary.” Taking scratch paper, he began to draw, slowly, grimly.
   Peering over his shoulder, Frink saw a bracelet design, an abstract with flowing lines. “Is there a market?” All he had ever seen were the traditional—even antique—objects from the past. “Nobody wants contemporary American; there isn’t any such thing, not since the war.”
   “Create a market,” McCarthy said, with an angry grimace.
   “You mean sell it myself?”
   “Take it into retail shops. Like that—what’s it called? On Montgomery Street, that big ritzy art object place.”
   “American Artistic Handcrafts,” Frink said. He never went into fashionable, expensive stores such as that. Few Americans did; it was the Japanese who had the money to buy from such places.
   “You know what retailers like that are selling?” McCarthy said. “And getting a fortune for? Those goddam silver belt buckles from New Mexico that the Indians make. Those goddam tourist trash pieces, all alike. Supposedly native art.”
   For a long time Frink regarded McCarthy. “I know what else they sell,” he said finally. “And so do you.”
   “Yes,” McCarthy said.
   They both knew—because they had both been directly involved, and for a long time.
   W-M Corporation’s stated legal business consisted in turning out wrought-iron staircases, railings, fireplaces, and ornaments for new apartment buildings, all on a mass basis, from standard designs. For a new forty-unit building the same piece would be executed forty times in a row. Ostensibly, W-M Corporation was an iron foundry. But in addition, it maintained another business from which its real profits were derived.
   Using an elaborate variety of tools, materials, and machines, W-M Corporation turned out a constant flow of forgeries of pre-war American artifacts. These forgeries were cautiously but expertly fed into the wholesale art object market, to join the genuine objects collected throughout the continent. As in the stamp and coin business, no one could possibly estimate the percentage of forgeries in circulation. And no one—especially the dealers and the collectors themselves—wanted to.
   When Frink had quit, there lay half-finished on his bench a Colt revolver of the Frontier period; he had made the molds himself, done the casting, and had been busy handsmoothing the pieces. There was an unlimited market for small arms of the American Civil War and Frontier period; W-M Corporation could sell all that Frink could turn out. It was his specialty.
   Walking slowly over to his bench, Frink picked up the still-rough and burred ramrod of the revolver. Another three days and the gun would be finished. Yes, he thought, it was good work. An expert could have told the difference… but the Japanese collectors weren’t authorities in the proper sense, had no standards or tests by which to judge.
   In fact, as far as he knew, it had never occurred to them to ask themselves if the so-called historic art objects for sale in West Coast shops were genuine. Perhaps someday they would… and then the bubble would burst, the market would collapse even for the authentic pieces. A Gresham’s Law: the fakes would undermine the value of the real. And that no doubt was the motive for the failure to investigate; after all, everyone was happy. The factories, here and there in the various cities, which turned out the pieces, they made their profits. The wholesalers passed them on, and the dealers displayed and advertised them. The collectors shelled out their money and carried their purchases happily home, to impress their associates, friends, and mistresses.
   Like postwar boodle paper money, it was fine until questioned. Nobody was hurt—until the day of reckoning. And then everyone, equally, would be ruined. But meanwhile, nobody talked about it, even the men who earned their living turning out the forgeries; they shut their own minds to what they made, kept their attention on the mere technical problems.
   “How long since you tried to do original designing?” McCarthy asked.
   Frink shrugged. “Years. I can copy accurately as hell. But—”
   “You know what I think? I think you’ve picked up the Nazi idea that Jews can’t create. That they can only imitate and sell. Middlemen.” He fixed his merciless scrutiny on Frink.
   “Maybe so,” Frink said.
   “Try it. Do some original designs. Or work directly on the metal. Play around. Like a kid plays.”
   “No,” Frink said.
   “You have no faith,” McCarthy said. “You’ve completely lost faith in yourself—right? Too bad. Because I know you could do it.” He walked away from the workbench.
   It is too bad, Frink thought. But nevertheless it’s the truth. It’s a fact. I can’t get faith or enthusiasm by willing it. Deciding to.
   That McCarthy, he thought, is a damn good shop foreman. He has the knack of needling a man, getting him to put out his best efforts, to do his utmost in spite of himself. He’s a natural leader; he almost inspired me, for a moment, there. But—McCarthy had gone off, now; the effort had failed.
   Too bad I don’t have my copy of the oracle here, Frink thought. I could consult it on this; take the issue to it for its five thousand years of wisdom. And then he recalled that there was copy of the I Ching in the lounge of the business office of W-M Corporation. So he made his way from the work area, along the corridor, hurriedly through the business office to the lounge.
   Seated in one of the chrome and plastic lounge chairs, he wrote his question out on the back of an envelope: “Should I attempt to go into the creative private business outlined to me just now?” And then he began throwing the coins.
   The bottom line was a Seven, and so was the second and then the third. The bottom trigam in Ch’ien, he realized. That sounded good; Ch’ien was the creative. Then line Four, an eight. Yin. And line Five, also eight, a yin line. Good lord, he thought excitedly; one more yin line and I’ve got Hexagram Eleven, T’ai, Peace. Very favorable judgment. Or—his hands trembled as he rattled the coins. A yang line and hence Hexagram Twenty-six, Ta Ch’u, the Taming Power of the Great. Both have favorable judgments, and it has to be one or the other. He threw the three coins.
   Yin. A six. It was Peace.
   Opening the book, he read the judgment.


   PEACE. The small departs.
   The great approaches.
   Good fortune. Success.


   So I ought to do as Ed McCarthy says. Open my little business. Now the six at the top, my one moving line. He turned the page. What was the text? He could not recall; probably favorable because the hexagram itself was so favorable. Union of heaven and earth—but the first and last lines were outside the hexagram always, so possibly the six at the top…
   His eyes picked out the line, read it in a flash.


   The wall falls back into the moat.
   Use no army now.
   Make your commands known within your own town.
   Perseverance brings humiliation.


   My busted back! he exclaimed, horrified. And the commentary.


   The change alluded to in the middle of the hexagram has begun to take place. The wall of the town sinks back into the moat from which it was dug. The hour of doom is at hand…


   It was, beyond doubt, one of the most dismal lines in the entire book, of more than three thousand lines. And yet the judgment of the hexagram was good.
   Which was he supposed to follow?
   And how could they be so different? It had never happened to him before, good fortune and doom mixed together in the oracle’s prophecy; what a weird fate, as if the oracle had scraped the bottom of the barrel, tossed up every sort of rag, bone, and turd of the dark, then reversed itself and poured in the light like a cook gone barmy. I must have pressed two buttons at once, he decided; jammed the works and got this schlimazl’s eye view of reality. Just for a second—fortunately. Didn’t last.
   Hell, he thought, it has to be one or the other; it can’t be both. You can’t have good fortune and doom simultaneously.
   Or… can you?
   The jewelry business will bring good fortune; the judgment refers to that. But the line, the goddam line; it refers to something deeper, some future catastrophe probably not even connected with the jewelry business. Some evil fate that’s in store for me anyhow…
   War! he thought. Third World War! All frigging two billion of us killed, our civilization wiped out. Hydrogen bombs falling like hail.
   Oy gewalt! he thought. What’s happening? Did I start it in motion? Or is someone else tinkering, someone I don’t even know? Or—the whole lot of us. It’s the fault of those physicists and that synchronicity theory, every particle being connected with every other; you can’t fart without changing the balance in the universe. It makes living a funny joke with nobody around to laugh. I open a book and get a report on future events that even God would like to file and forget. And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.
   I should take my tools, get my motors from McCarthy, open my shop, start my piddling business, go on despite the horrible line. Be working, creating in my own way right up to the end, living as best I can, as actively as possible, until the wall falls back into the moat for all of us, all mankind. That’s what the oracle is telling me. Fate will poleax us eventually anyhow, but I have my job in the meantime; I must use my mind, my hands.
   The judgment was for me alone, for my work. But the line; it was for us all.
   I’m too small, he thought, I can only read what’s written, glance up and then lower my head and plod along where I left off as if I hadn’t seen; the oracle doesn’t expect me to start running up and down the streets, squalling and yammering for public attention.
   Can anyone alter it? he wondered. All of us combined… or one great figure… or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.
   Closing the book, he left the lounge and walked back to the main work area. When he caught sight of McCarthy, he waved him over to one side where they could resume talk.
   “The more I think about it,” Frink said, “the more I like your idea.”
   “Fine,” McCarthy said. “Now listen. Here’s what you do. You have to get money from Wyndam-Matson.” He winked, a slow, intense, frightened twitch of his eyelid. “I figured out how. I’m going to quit and go in with you. My designs, see. What’s wrong with that? I know they’re good.”
   “Sure,” Frink said, a little dazed.
   “I’ll see you after work tonight,” McCarthy said. “At my apartment. You come over around seven and have dinner with Jean and me—if you can stand the kids.”
   “Okay,” Frink said.
   McCarthy gave him a slap on the shoulder and went off.
   I’ve gone a long way, Frink said to himself. In the last ten minutes. But he did not feel apprehensive; he felt, now, excitement.
   It sure happened fast, he thought as he walked over to his bench and began collecting his tools. I guess that’s how those kinds of things happen. Opportunity, when it comes—
   All my life I’ve waited for this. When the oracle says “something must be achieved” it means this. The time is truly great. What is the time, now? What is this moment? Six at the top in Hexagram Eleven changes everything to Twenty-six, Taming Power of the Great. Yin becomes yang; the line moves and a new Moment appears. And I was so off stride I didn’t even notice!
   I’ll bet that’s why I got that terrible line; that’s the only way Hexagram Eleven can change to Hexagram Twenty-six, by that moving six at the top. So I shouldn’t get my ass in such an uproar.
   But, despite his excitement and optimism, he could not get the line completely out of his mind.
   However, he thought ironically, I’m making a damn good try; by seven tonight maybe I’ll have managed to forget it like it never happened.
   He thought, I sure hope so. Because this get-together with Ed is big. He’s got some surefire idea; I can tell. And I don’t intend to find myself left out.
   Right now I’m nothing, but if I can swing this, then maybe lean get Juliana back. I know what she wants—she deserves to be married to a man who matters, an important person in the community, not some meshuggener. Men used to be men, in the old days; before the war for instance. But all that’s gone now.
   No wonder she roams around from place to place, from man to man, seeking. And not even knowing what it is herself, what her biology needs. But I know, and through this big-time action with McCarthy—whatever it is—I’m going to achieve it for her.

   At lunchtime, Robert Childan closed up American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. Usually he crossed the street and ate at the coffee shop. In any case he stayed away no more than half an hour, and today he was gone only twenty minutes. Memory of his ordeal with Mr. Tagomi and the staff of the Trade Mission still kept his stomach upset.
   As he returned to his store he said to himself, Perhaps new policy of not making calls. Do all business within store.
   Two hours showing. Much too long. Almost four hours in all; too late to reopen store. An entire afternoon to sell one item, one Mickey Mouse watch; expensive treasure, but—he unlocked the store door, propped it open, went to hang up his coat in the rear.
   When he re-emerged he found that he had a customer. A white man. Well, he thought. Surprise.
   “Good day, sir,” Childan said, bowing slightly. Probably a pinoc. Slender, rather dark man. Well-dressed, fashionable. But not at ease. Slight shine of perspiration.
   “Good day,” the man murmured, moving around the store to inspect the displays. Then, all at once, he approached the counter. He reached into his coat, produced a small shiny leather cardcase, set down a multicolored, elaborately printed card.
   On the card, the Imperial emblem. And military insignia. The Navy. Admiral Harusha. Robert Childan examined it, impressed.
   “The admiral’s ship,” the customer explained, “lies in San Francisco Bay at this moment. The carrier Syokaku.”
   “Ah,” Childan said.
   “Admiral Harusha has never before visited the West Coast,” the customer explained. “He has many wishes while here, one of which is to pay personal visit to your famous store. All the time in the Home Islands he has heard of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc.”
   Childan bowed with delight.
   “However,” the man continued, “due to pressure of appointments, the admiral cannot pay personal visit to your esteemed store. But he has sent me; I am his gentleman.”
   “The admiral is a collector?” Childan said, his mind working at top speed.
   “He is a lover of the arts. He is a connoisseur. But not a collector. What he desires is for gift purposes; to wit: he wishes to present each officer of his ship a valuable historic artifact, a side arm of the epic American Civil War.” The man paused. “There are twelve officers in all.”
   To himself, Childan thought, Twelve Civil War side arms. Cost to buyer: almost ten thousand dollars. He trembled.
   “As is well known,” the man continued, “your shop sells such priceless antique artifacts from the pages of American history. Alas, all too rapidly vanishing into limbo of time.”
   Taking enormous care in his words—he could not afford to lose this, to make one single slip—Childan said, “Yes, it is true. Of all the stores in PSA, I possess finest stock imaginable of Civil War weapons. I will be happy to serve Admiral Harusha. Shall I gather superb collection of such and bring aboard the Syokaku? This afternoon, possibly?”
   The man said, “No, I shall inspect them here.”
   Twelve. Childan computed. He did not possess twelve—in fact, he had only three. But he could acquire twelve, if luck were with him, through various channels within the week. Air express from the East, for instance. And local wholesale contacts.
   “You, sir,” Childan said, “are knowledgeable in such weapons?”
   “Tolerably,” the man said. “I have a small collection of hand weapons, including tiny secret pistol made to look like domino, Circa 1840.”
   “Exquisite item,” Childan said, as he went to the locked safe to get several guns for Admiral Harusha’s gentleman’s inspection.
   When he returned, he found the man writing out a bank check. The man paused and said, “The admiral desires to pay in advance. A deposit of fifteen thousand PSA dollars.”
   The room swam before Childan’s eyes. But he managed to keep his voice level; he even made himself sound a trifle bored. “If you wish. It is not necessary; a mere formality of business.” Laying down a leather and felt box he said, “Here is exceptional Colt .44 of 1860.” He opened the box. “Black powder and ball. This issued to U. S. Army Boys in blue carried these into for instance Second Bull Run.”
   For a considerable time the man examined the Colt .44. Then, lifting his eyes, he said calmly, “Sir, this is an imitation.”
   “Eh?” Childan said, not comprehending.
   “This piece is no older than six months. Sir, your offering is a fake. I am cast into gloom. But see. The wood here. Artificially aged by an acid chemical. What a shame.” He laid the gun down.
   Childan picked the gun up and stood holding it between his hands. He could think of nothing to say. Turning the gun over and over, he at last said, “It can’t be.”
   “An imitation of the authentic historic gun. Nothing more. I am afraid, sir, you have been deceived. Perhaps by some unscrupulous churl. You must report this to the San Francisco police.” The man bowed. “It grieves me. You may have other imitations, too, in your shop. Is it possible, sir, that you, the owner, dealer, in such items, cannot distinguish the forgeries from the real?”
   There was silence.
   Reaching down, the man picked up the half-completed check which he had been making out. He returned it to his pocket, put his pen away, and bowed. “It is a shame, sir, but I clearly cannot, alas, conduct my business with American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. after all. Admiral Harusha will be disappointed. Nevertheless, you can see my position.”
   Childan stared down at the gun.
   “Good day, sir,” the man said. “Please accept my humbly meant advice; hire some expert to scrutinize your acquisitions. Your reputation… I am sure you understand.”
   Childan mumbled, “Sir, if you could please—”
   “Be tranquil, sir. I will not mention this to anyone. I shall tell the admiral that unfortunately your shop was closed today. After all—” The man paused at the doorway. “We are both, after all, white men.” Bowing once more, he departed.
   Alone, Childan stood holding the gun.
   It can’t be, he thought.
   But it must be. Good God in heaven. I am ruined. I have lost a fifteen-thousand-dollar sale. And my reputation, if this gets out. If that man, Admiral Harusha’s gentleman, is not discreet.
   I will kill myself, he decided. I have lost place. I cannot go on; that is a fact.
   On the other hand, perhaps that man erred.
   Perhaps he lied.
   He was sent by United States Historic Objects to destroy me. Or by West Coast Art Exclusives.
   Anyhow, one of my competitors.
   The gun is no doubt genuine.
   How can I find out? Childan racked his brains. Ah. I will have the gun analyzed at the University of California Penology Department. I know someone there, or at least I once did. This matter came up before once. Alleged non-authenticity of ancient breechloader.
   In haste, he telephoned one of the city’s bonded messenger and delivery services, told them to send a man over at once. Then he wrapped the gun and wrote out a note to the University lab, telling them to make professional estimate of the gun’s age at once and inform him by phone. The delivery man arrived; Childan gave him the note and parcel, the address, and told him to go by helicopter. The man departed, and Childan began pacing about his store, waiting… waiting.
   At three o’clock the University called.
   “Mr. Childan,” the voice said, “you wanted this weapon tested for authenticity, this 1860 Army Model Colt .44.” A pause, while Childan gripped the phone with apprehension. “Here’s the lab report. It’s a reproduction cast from plastic molds except for the walnut. Serial numbers all wrong. The frame not casehardened by the cyanide process. Both brown and blue surfaces achieved by a modern quick-acting technique, the whole gun artificially aged, given a treatment to make it appear old and worn.”
   Childan said thickly, “The man who brought it to me for appraisal—”
   “Tell him he’s been taken,” the University technician said. “And very taken. It’s a good job. Done by a real pro. See, the authentic gun was given its—you know the bluemetal parts? Those were put in a box of leather strips, sealed, with cyanide gas, and heated. Too cumbersome, nowadays. But this was done in a fairly well-equipped shop. We detected particles of several polishing and finishing compounds, some quite unusual. Now we can’t prove this, but we know there’s a regular industry turning out these fakes. There must be. We’ve seen so many.”
   “No,” Childan said. “That is only a rumor. I can state that to you as absolute fact, sir.” His voice rose and broke screechingly. “And I am in a position to know. Why do you think I sent it to you? I could perceive its fakery, being qualified by years of training. Such as this is a rarity, an oddity. Actually a joke. A prank.” He broke off, panting. “Thank you for confirming my own observations. You will bill me. Thank you.” He rang off at once.
   Then, without pausing, he got out his records. He began tracing the gun. How had it come to him? From whom?
   It had come, he discovered, from one of the largest wholesale suppliers in San Francisco. Ray Calvin Associates, on Van Ness. At once he phoned them.
   “Let me talk to Mr. Calvin,” he said. His voice had now become a trifle steadier.
   Presently a gruff voice, very busy. “Yes.”
   “This is Bob Childan. At A.A.H. Inc. On Montgomery. Ray, I have a matter of delicacy. I wish to see you, private conference, sometime today in your office or et cetera. Believe me, sir. You had better heed my request.” Now, he discovered, he was bellowing into the phone.
   “Okay,” Ray Calvin said.
   “Tell no one. This is absolutely confidential.”
   “Four o’clock?”
   “Four it is,” Childan said. “At your office. Good day.” He slammed the receiver down so furiously that the entire phone fell from the counter to the floor; kneeling, he gathered it up and replaced it in its spot.
   There was half an hour ahead before he should start; he had all that time to pace, helpless, waiting. What to do? An idea. He phoned the San Francisco office of the Tokyo Herald, on Market Street.
   “Sirs,” he said, “please tell me if the carrier Syokaku is in the harbor, and if so, how long. I would appreciate this information from your estimable newspaper.”
   An agonizing wait. Then the girl was back.
   “According to our reference room, sir,” she said in a giggling voice, “the carrier Syokaku is at the bottom of the Philippine Sea. It was sunk by an American submarine in 1945. Any more questions we can help you with, sir?” Obviously they, at the newspaper office, appreciated the wild-goose variety of prank that had been played on him.
   He hung up. No carrier Syokaku for seventeen years. Probably no Admiral Harusha. The man had been an imposter. And yet—
   The man had been right. The Colt .44 was a fake.
   It did not make sense.
   Perhaps the man was a speculator; he had been trying to corner the market in Civil War period side arms. An expert. And he had recognized the fake; he was the professional of professionals.
   It would take a professional to know. Someone in the business. Not a mere collector.
   Childan felt a tiny measure of relief. Then few others would detect. Perhaps no one else. Secret safe.
   Let matter drop?
   He considered. No. Must investigate. First of all, get back investment; get reimbursement from Ray Calvin. And—must have all other artifacts in stock examined by University lab.
   But—suppose many of them are non-authentic?
   Difficult matter.
   Only way is this, he decided. He felt grim, even desperate. Go to Ray Calvin. Confront him. Insist that he pursue matter back to source. Maybe he is innocent, too. Maybe not. In any case, tell him no more fakes or I will not buy through him ever again.
   He will have to absorb the loss, Childan decided. Not I. If he will not, then I will approach other retail dealers, tell them; ruin his reputation. Why should I be ruined alone? Pass it on to those responsible, hand hot potato back along line.
   But it must be done with utmost secrecy. Keep matter strictly between ourselves.

5

   The telephone call from Ray Calvin puzzled Wyndam-Matson. He could not make sense out of it, partly because of Calvin’s rapid manner of speech and partly because at the moment the call came—eleven-thirty in the evening—Wyndam-Matson was entertaining a lady visitor in his apartment at the Muromachi Hotel.
   Calvin said, “Look here, my friend, we’re sending back that whole last shipment from you people. And I’d send back stuff before that, but we’ve paid for everything except the last shipment. Your billing date May eighteenth.”
   Naturally, Wyndam-Matson wanted to know why.
   “They’re lousy fakes,” Calvin said.
   “But you knew that.” He was dumbfounded. “I mean, Ray, you’ve always been aware of the situation.” He glanced around; the girl was off somewhere, probably in the powder room.
   Calvin said, “I knew they were fakes. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the lousy part. Look, I’m really not concerned whether some gun you send us really was used in the Civil War or not; all I care about is that it’s a satisfactory Colt .44, item whatever-it-is in your catalog: It has to meet standards. Look, do you know who Robert Childan is?”
   “Yes.” He had a vague memory, although at the moment he could not quite pin the name down. Somebody important.
   “He was in here today. To my office. I’m calling from my office, not home; we’re still going over it. Anyhow, he came in and rattled off some long account. He was mad as hell. Really agitated. Well, evidently some big customer of his, some Jap admiral, came in or had his man come in. Childan talked about a twenty-thousand-dollar order, but that’s probably an exaggeration. Anyhow, what did happen—I have no cause to doubt this part—is that the Japanese came in, wanted to buy, took one look at one of those Colt .44 items you people turn out, saw it to be a fake, put his money back in his pants pocket, and left. Now. What do you say?”
   There was nothing that Wyndam-Matson could think of to say. But he thought to himself instantly. It’s Frink and McCarthy. They said they’d do something, and this is it. But—he could not figure out what they had done; he could not make sense out of Calvin’s account.
   A kind of superstitious fright filled him. Those two—how could they doctor an item made last February? He had presumed they would go to the police or the newspapers, or even the pinoc government at Sac, and of course he had all those taken care of. Eerie. He did not know what to tell Calvin; he mumbled on for what seemed an endless time and at last managed to wind up the conversation and get off the phone.
   When he hung up he realized, with a start, that Rita had come out of the bedroom and had listened to the whole conversation; she had been pacing irritably back and forth, wearing only a black silk slip, her blond hair falling loosely over her bare, slightly freckled shoulders.
   “Tell the police,” she said.
   Well, he thought, it probably would be cheaper to offer them two thousand or so. They’d accept it; that was probably all they wanted. Little fellows like that thought small; to them it would seem like a lot. They’d put in their new business, lose it, be broke again inside a month.
   “No,” he said.
   “Why not? Blackmail’s a crime.”
   It was hard to explain to her. He was accustomed to paying people; it was part of the overhead, like the utilities. If the sum was small enough… but she did have a point. He mulled it over.
   I’ll give them two thousand, but I’ll also get in touch with that guy at the Civic Center I know, that police inspector. I’ll have them look into both Frink and McCarthy and see if there’s anything of use. So if they come back and try again– I’ll be able to handle them.
   For instance, he thought, somebody told me Frink’s a kike. Changed his nose and name. All I have to do is notify the German consul here. Routine business. He’ll request the Jap authorities for extradition. They’ll gas the bugger soon as they get him across the Demarcation Line. I think they’ve got one of those camps in New York, he thought. Those oven camps.
   “I’m surprised,” the girl said, “that anyone could blackmail a man of your stature.” She eyed him.
   “Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “This whole damn historicity business is nonsense. Those Japs are bats. I’ll prove it.” Getting up, he hurried into his study, returned at once with two cigarette lighters which he set down on the coffee table. “Look at these. Look the same, don’t they? Well, listen. One has historicity in it.” He grinned at her. “Pick them up. Go ahead. One’s worth, oh, maybe forty or fifty thousand dollars on the collectors’ market.”
   The girl gingerly picked up the two lighters and examined them.
   “Don’t you feel it?” he kidded her. “The historicity?”
   She said, “What is ‘historicity’?”
   “When a thing has history in it. Listen. One of those two Zippo lighters was in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pocket when he was assassinated. And one wasn’t. One has historicity, a hell of a lot of it. As much as any object ever had. And one has nothing. Can you feel it?” He nudged her. “You can’t. You can’t tell which is which. There’s no ‘mystical plasmic presence,’ no ‘aura’ around it.”
   “Gee,” the girl said, awed. “Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?”
   “Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It’s all a big racket; they’re playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun. I used to be a collector. In fact, that’s how I got into this business. I collected stamps. Early British colonies.”
   The girl now stood at the window, her arms folded, gazing out at the lights of downtown San Francisco. “My mother and dad used to say we wouldn’t have lost the war if he had lived,” she said.
   “Okay,” Wyndam-Matson went on. “Now suppose say last year the Canadian Government or somebody, anybody, finds the plates from which some old stamp was printed. And the ink. And a supply of—”
   “I don’t believe either of those two lighters belonged to Franklin Roosevelt,” the girl said.
   Wyndam-Matson giggled. “That’s my point! I’d have to prove it to you with some sort of document. A paper of authenticity. And so it’s all a fake, a mass delusion. The paper proves its worth, not the object itself!”
   “Show me the paper.”
   “Sure.” Hopping up, he made his way back into the study. From the wall he took the Smithsonian Institution’s framed certificate; the paper and the lighter had cost him a fortune, but they were worth it—because they enabled him to prove that he was right, that the word “fake” meant nothing really, since the word “authentic” meant nothing really.
   “A Colt .44 is a Colt .44,” he called to the girl as he hurried back into the living room. “It has to do with bore and design, not when it was made. It has to do with—”
   She held out her hand. He gave her the document.
   “So it is genuine,” she said finally.
   “Yes. This one.” He picked up the lighter with the long scratch across its side.
   “I think I’d like to go now,” the girl said. “I’ll see you again some other evening.” She set down the document and lighter and moved toward the bedroom, where her clothes were.
   “Why?” he shouted in agitation, following after her.
   “You know it’s perfectly safe; my wife won’t be back for weeks—I explained the whole situation to you. A detached retina.”
   “It’s not that.”
   “What, then?”
   Rita said, “Please call a pedecab for me. While I dress.”
   “I’ll drive you home,” he said grumpily.
   She dressed, and then, while he got her coat from the closet, she wandered silently about the apartment. She seemed pensive, withdrawn, even a little depressed. The past makes people sad, he realized. Damn it; why did I have to bring it up? But hell, she’s so young—I thought she’d hardly know the name.
   At the bookcase she knelt. “Did you read this?” she asked, taking a book out.
   Nearsightedly he peered. Lurid cover. Novel. “No,” he said. “My wife got that. She reads a lot.”
   “You should read it.”
   Still feeling disappointed, he grabbed the book, glanced at it. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “Isn’t this one of those banned-in-Boston books?” he said.
   “Banned through the United States. And in Europe, of course.” She had gone to the hall door and stood there now, waiting.
   “I’ve heard of this Hawthorne Abendsen.” But actually he had not. All he could recall about the book was—what? That it was very popular right now. Another fad. Another mass craze. He bent down and stuck it back in the shelf. “I don’t have time to read popular fiction. I’m too busy with work.” Secretaries, he thought acidly, read that junk, at home alone in bed at night. It stimulates them. Instead of the real thing. Which they’re afraid of. But of course really crave.
   “One of those love stories,” he said as he sullenly opened the hall door.
   “No,” she said. “A story about war.” As they walked down the hail to the elevator she said, “He says the same thing. As my mother and dad.”
   “Who? That Abbotson?”
   “That’s his theory. If Joe Zangara had missed him, he would have pulled America out of the Depression and armed it so that—” She broke off. They had arrived at the elevator, and other people were waiting.
   Later, as they drove through the nocturnal traffic in Wyndam-Matson’s Mercedes-Benz, she resumed.
   “Abendsen’s theory is that Roosevelt would have been a terribly strong President. As strong as Lincoln. He showed it in the year he was President, all those measures he introduced. The book is fiction. I mean, it’s in novel form. Roosevelt isn’t assassinated in Miami; he goes on and is reelected in 1936, so he’s President until 1940, until during the war. Don’t you see? He’s still President when Germany attacks England and France and Poland. And he sees all that. He makes America strong. Garner was a really awful President. A lot of what happened was his fault. And then in 1940, instead of Bricker, a Democrat would have been elected—”
   “According to this Abelson,” Wyndam-Matson broke in. He glanced at the girl beside him. God, they read a book, he thought, and they spout on forever.
   “His theory is that instead of an Isolationist like Bricker, in 1940 after Roosevelt, Rexford Tugwell would have been President.” Her smooth face, reflecting the traffic lights, glowed with animation; her eyes had become large and she gestured as she talked. “And he would have been very active in continuing the Roosevelt anti-Nazi policies. So Germany would have been afraid to come to Japan’s help in 1941. They would not have honored their treaty. Do you see?” Turning toward him on the seat, grabbing his shoulder with intensity, she said, “And so Germany and Japan would have lost the war!”
   He laughed.
   Staring at him, seeking something in his face—he could not tell what, and anyhow he had to watch the other cars—she said, “It’s not funny. It really would have been like that. The U.S. would have been able to lick the Japanese. And—”
   “How?” he broke in.
   “He has it all laid out.” For a moment she was silent. “It’s in fiction form,” she said. “Naturally, it’s got a lot of fictional parts; I mean, it’s got to be entertaining or people wouldn’t read it. It has a human-interest theme; there’s these two young people, the boy is in the American Army. The girl—well, anyhow, President Tugwell is really smart. He understands what the Japs are going to do.” Anxiously, she said, “It’s all right to talk about this; the Japs have let it be circulated in the Pacific. I read that a lot of them are reading it. It’s popular in the Home Islands. It’s stirred up a lot of talk.”
   Wyndam-Matson said, “Listen. What does he say about Pearl Harbor?”
   “President Tugwell is so smart that he has all the ships out to sea. So the U.S. fleet isn’t destroyed.”
   “I see.”
   “So, there really isn’t any Pearl Harbor. They attack, but all they get is some little boats.”
   “It’s called ‘The Grasshopper something?’ “
   “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. That’s a quote from the Bible.”
   “And Japan is defeated because there’s no Pearl Harbor. Listen. Japan would have won anyhow. Even if there had been no Pearl Harbor.”
   “The U.S. fleet—in his book—keeps them from taking the Philippines and Australia.”
   “They would have taken them anyhow; their fleet was superior. I know the Japanese fairly well, and it was their destiny to assume dominance in the Pacific. The U.S. was on the decline ever since World War One. Every country on the Allied side was ruined in that war, morally and spiritually.”
   With stubbornness, the girl said, “And if the Germans hadn’t taken Malta, Churchill would have stayed in power and guided England to victory.”
   “How? Where?”
   “In North Africa—Churchill would have defeated Rommel finally.”
   Wyndam-Matson guffawed.
   “And once the British had defeated Rommel, they could move their whole army back and up through Turkey to join remnants of Russian armies and make a stand-in the book, they halt the Germans’ eastward advance into Russia at some town on the Volga. We never heard of this town, but it really exists because I looked it up in the atlas.”
   “What’s it called?”
   “Stalingrad. And the British turn the tide of the war, there. So, in the book, Rommel never would have linked up with those German armies that came down from Russia, von Paulus’ armies; remember? And the Germans never would have been able to go on into the Middle East and get the needed oil, or on into India like they did and link up with the Japanese. And—”
   “No strategy on earth could have defeated Erwin Rommel,” Wyndam-Matson said. “And no events like this guy dreamed up, this town in Russia very heroically called ‘Stalingrad,’ no holding action could have done any more than delay the outcome; it couldn’t have changed it. Listen. I met Rommel. In New York, when I was there on business, in 1948.” Actually, he had only seen the Military Governor of the U.S.A. At a reception in the White House, and at a distance. “What a man. What dignity and bearing. So I know what I’m talking about,” he wound up.
   “It was a dreadful thing,” Rita said, “when General Rommel was relieved of his post and that awful Lammers was appointed in his place. That’s when that murdering and those concentration camps really began.”
   “They existed when Rommel was Military Governor.”
   “But—” She gestured. “It wasn’t official. Maybe those SS hoodlums did those acts then… but he wasn’t like the rest of them; he was more like those old Prussians. He was harsh—”
   “I’ll tell you who really did a good job in the U.S.A.,” Wyndam-Matson said, “who you can look to for the economic revival. Albert Speer. Not Rommel and not the Organization Todt. Speer was the best appointment the Partei made in North America; he got all those businesses and corporations and factories—everything!—going again, and on an efficient basis. I wish we had that out here—as it is, we’ve got five outfits competing in each field, and at terrific waste. There’s nothing more foolish than economic competition.”
   Rita said, “I couldn’t live in those work camps, those dorms they have back East. A girl friend of mine; she lived there. They censored her mail—she couldn’t tell me about it until she moved back out here again. They had to get up at six-thirty in the morning to band music.”
   “You’d get used to it. You’d have clean quarters, adequate food, recreation, medical care provided. What do you want? Egg in your beer?”
   Through the cool night fog of San Francisco, his big German-made car moved quietly.

   On the floor Mr. Tagomi sat, his legs folded beneath him. He held a handleless cup of oolong tea, into which he blew now and then as he smiled up at Mr. Baynes.
   “You have a lovely place here,” Baynes said presently. “There is a peacefulness here on the Pacific Coast. It is completely different from—back there.” He did not specify.
   “ ‘God speaks to man in the sign of the Arousing.’ “ Mr. Tagomi murmured.
   “Pardon?”
   “The oracle. I’m sorry. Fleece-seeking cortical response.”
   Woolgathering, Baynes thought. That’s the idiom he means. To himself he smiled.
   “We are absurd,” Mr. Tagomi said, “because we live by a five-thousand-year-old book. We set it questions as if it were alive. It is alive. As is the Christian Bible; many books are actually alive. Not in metaphoric fashion. Spirit animates it. Do you see?” He inspected Mr. Baynes’ face for his reaction.
   Carefully phrasing his words, Baynes said, “I just don’t know enough about religion. It’s out of my field. I prefer to stick to subjects I have some competence in.” As a matter of fact, he was not certain what Mr. Tagomi was talking about. I must be tired, Mr. Baynes thought. There has been, since I got here this evening, a sort of… gnomish quality about everything. A smaller-than-life quality, with a dash of the droll. What is this five-thousand-year-old book? The Mickey Mouse watch, Mr. Tagomi himself, the fragile cup in Mr. Tagomi’s hand… and, on the wall facing Mr. Baynes, an enormous buffalo head, ugly and menacing.
   “What is that head?” he asked suddenly.
   “That,” Mr. Tagomi said, “is nothing less than creature which sustained the aboriginal in bygone days.”
   “I see.”
   “Shall I demonstrate art of buffalo slaying?” Mr. Tagomi put his cup down on the table and rose to his feet. Here in his own home in the evening he wore a silk robe, slippers, and white cravat. “Here am I aboard iron horse.” He squatted in the air. “Across lap, trusty Winchester rifle 1866 issue from my collection.” He glanced inquiringly at Mr. Baynes. “You are travel-stained, sir.”
   “Afraid so,” Baynes said. “It is all a little overwhelming for me. A lot of business worries.” And other worries, he thought. His head ached. He wondered if the fine I. G. Farben analgesics were available here on the Pacific Coast; he had become accustomed to them for his sinus headaches.
   “We must all have faith in something,” Mr. Tagomi said. “We cannot know the answers. We cannot see ahead, on our own.”
   Mr. Baynes nodded.
   “My wife may have something for your head,” Mr. Tagomi said, seeing him remove his glasses and rub his forehead. “Eye muscles causing pain. Pardon me.” Bowing, he left the room.
   What I need is sleep, Baynes thought. A night’s rest. Or is it that I’m not facing the situation? Shrinking, because it is hard.
   When Mr. Tagomi returned—carrying a glass of water and some sort of pill—Mr. Baynes said, “I really am going to have to say good night and get to my hotel room. But I want to find out something first. We can discuss it further tomorrow, if that’s convenient with you. Have you been told about a third party who is to join us in our discussions?”
   Mr. Tagomi’s face registered surprise for an instant; then the surprise vanished and he assumed a careless expression. “There was nothing said to that effect. However—it is interesting, of course.”
   “From the Home Islands.”
   “Ah,” Mr. Tagomi said. And this time the surprise did not appear at all. It was totally controlled.
   “An elderly retired businessman,” Mr. Baynes said. “Who is journeying by ship. He has been on his way for two weeks, now. He has a prejudice against air travel.”
   “The quaint elderly,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   “His interests keep him informed as to the Home Islands markets. He will be able to give us information, and he was coming to San Francisco for a vacation in any case. It is not terribly important. But it will make our talks more accurate.”
   “Yes,” Mr. Tagomi said. “He can correct errors regarding home market. I have been away two years.”
   “Did you want to give me that pill?”
   Starting, Mr. Tagomi glanced down, saw that he still held the pill and water. “Excuse me. This is powerful. Called zaracaine. Manufactured by drug firm in District of China.” As he held his palm out, he added, “Non-habit-forming.”
   “This old person,” Mr. Baynes said as he prepared to take the pill, “will probably contact your Trade Mission direct. I will write down his name so that your people will know not to turn him away. I have not met him, but I understand he’s a little deaf and a little eccentric. We want to be sure he doesn’t become—miffed.” Mr. Tagomi seemed to understand. “He loves rhododendrons. He’ll be happy if you can provide someone to talk to him about them for half an hour or so, while we arrange our meeting. His name, I will write it down.”
   Taking his pill, he got out his pen and wrote.
   “Mr. Shinjiro Yatabe,” Mr. Tagomi read, accepting the slip of paper. He dutifully put it away in his pocketbook.
   “One more point.”
   Mr. Tagomi slowly picked at the rim of his cup, listening.
   “A delicate trifle. The old gentleman—it is embarrassing. He is almost eighty. Some of his ventures, toward the end of his career, were not successful. Do you see?”
   “He is not well-off any longer,” Mr. Tagomi said. “And perhaps he draws a pension.”
   “That is it. And the pension is painfully small. He therefore augments it by means here and there.”
   “A violation of some petty ordinance,” Mr. Tagomi said. “The Home Government and its bureaucratic officialdom. I grasp the situation. The old gentleman receives a stipend for his consultation with us, and he does not report it to his Pension Board. So we must not reveal his visit. They are only aware that he takes a vacation.”
   “You are a sophisticate,” Mr. Baynes said.
   Mr. Tagomi said, “This situation has occurred before. We have not in our society solved the problem of the aged, more of which persons occur constantly as medical measures improve. China teaches us rightly to honor the old. However, the Germans cause our neglect to seem close to outright virtue. I understand they murder the old.”
   “The Germans,” Baynes murmured, again rubbing his forehead. Had the pill had an effect? He felt a little drowsy.
   “Being from Scandinavia, you no doubt have had much contact with the Festung Europa. For instance, you embarked at Tempelhof. Can one take an attitude like this? You are a neutral. Give me your opinion, if you will.”
   “I don’t understand what attitude you mean,” Mr. Baynes said.
   “Toward the old, the sick, the feeble, the insane, the useless in all variations. ‘Of what use is a newborn baby?’ some Anglo-Saxon philosopher reputedly asked. I have committed that utterance to memory and contemplated it many times. Sir, there is no use. In general.”
   Mr. Baynes murmured some sound or other; he made it the noise of noncommittal politeness.
   “Isn’t it true,” Mr. Tagomi said, “that no man should be the instrument for another’s needs?” He leaned forward urgently. “Please give me your neutral Scandinavian opinion.”
   “I don’t know,” Mr. Baynes said.
   “During the war,” Mr. Tagomi said, “I held minor post in District of China. In Shanghai. There, at Hongkew, a settlement of Jews, interned by Imperial Government for duration. Kept alive by JOINT relief. The Nazi minister at Shanghai requested we massacre the Jews. I recall my superiors’ answer. It was, ‘Such is not in accord with humanitarian considerations.’ They rejected the request as barbaric. It impressed me.”
   “I see,” Mr. Baynes murmured. Is he trying to draw me out? he asked himself. Now he felt alert. His wits seemed to come together.
   “The Jews,” Mr. Tagomi said, “were described always by the Nazis as Asian and non-white. Sir, the implication was never lost on personages in Japan, even among the War Cabinet. I have not ever discussed this with Reich citizens whom I have encountered—”
   Mr. Baynes interrupted, “Well, I’m not a German. So I can hardly speak for Germany.” Standing, he moved toward the door. “I will resume the discussion with you tomorrow. Please excuse me. I cannot think.” But, as a matter of fact, his thoughts were now completely clear. I have to get out of here, he realized. This man is pushing me too far.
   “Forgive stupidity of fanaticism,” Mr. Tagomi said, at once moving to open the door. “Philosophical involvement blinded me to authentic human fact. Here.” He called something in Japanese, and the front door opened. A young Japanese appeared, bowing slightly, glancing at Mr. Baynes.
   My driver, Mr. Baynes thought.
   Perhaps my quixotic remarks on the Lufthansa flight, he thought suddenly. To that—whatever his name was. Lotze. Got back to the Japanese here, somehow. Some connection.
   I wish I hadn’t said that to Lotze, he thought. I regret. But it’s too late.
   I am not the right person. Not at all. Not for this.
   But then he thought. A Swede would say that to Lotze. It is all right. Nothing has gone wrong; I am being overly scrupulous. Carrying the habits of the previous situation into this. Actually I can do a good deal of open talking. That is the fact I have to adapt to.
   And yet, his conditioning was absolutely against it. The blood in his veins. His bones, his organs, rebelled. Open your mouth, he said to himself. Something. Anything. An opinion. You must, if you are to succeed.
   He said, “Perhaps they are driven by some desperate subconscious archetype, in the Jungian sense.”
   Mr. Tagomi nodded. “I have read Jung. I understand.”
   They shook hands. “I’ll telephone you tomorrow morning,” Mr. Baynes said. “Good night, sir.” He bowed, and so did Mr. Tagomi.
   The young smiling Japanese, stepping forward, said something to Mr. Baynes which he could not understand.
   “Eh?” Baynes said, as he gathered up his overcoat and stepped out onto the porch.
   Mr. Tagomi said, “He is addressing you in Swedish, sir. He has taken a course at Tokyo University on the Thirty Years’ War, and is fascinated by your great hero, Gustavus Adolphus.” Mr. Tagomi smiled sympathetically. “However, it is plain that his attempts to master so alien a linguistic have been hopeless. No doubt he uses one of those phonograph record courses; he is a student, and such courses, being cheap, are quite popular with students.”
   The young Japanese, obviously not understanding English, bowed and smiled.
   “I see,” Baynes murmured. “Well, I wish him luck.” I have my own linguistic problems, he thought. Evidently.
   Good lord—the young Japanese student, while driving him to his hotel, would no doubt attempt to converse with him in Swedish the entire way. A language which Mr. Baynes barely understood, and then only when it was spoken in the most formal and correct manner, certainly not when attempted by a young Japanese who tried to pick it up from a phonograph record course.
   He’ll never get through to me, Mr. Baynes thought. And he’ll keep trying, because this is his chance; probably he will never see a Swede again. Mr. Baynes groaned inwardly. What an ordeal it was going to be, for both of them.

6

   Early in the morning, enjoying the cool, bright sunlight, Mrs. Juliana Frink did her grocery shopping. She strolled along the sidewalk, carrying the two brown paper bags, halting at each store to study the window displays. She took her time.
   Wasn’t there something she was supposed to pick up at the drugstore? She wandered in. Her shift at the judo parlor did not begin until noon; this was her free time, today. Seating herself on a stool at the counter she put down her shopping bags and began to go over the different magazines.
   The new Life, she saw, had a big article called: TELEVISION IN EUROPE: GLIMPSE OF TOMORROW. Turning to it, interested, she saw a picture of a German family watching television in their living room. Already, the article said, there was four hours of image broadcast during the day from Berlin. Someday there would be television stations in all the major European cities. And, by 1970, one would be built in New York.
   The article showed Reich electronic engineers at the New York site, helping the local personnel with their problems. It was easy to tell which were the Germans. They had that healthy, clean, energetic, assured look. The Americans, on the other hand—they just looked like people. They could have been anybody.
   One of the German technicians could be seen pointing off somewhere, and the Americans were trying to make out what he was pointing at. I guess their eyesight is better than ours, she decided. Better diet over the last twenty years. As we’ve been told; they can see things no one else can. Vitamin A, perhaps?
   I wonder what it’s like to sit home in your living room and see the whole world on a little gray glass tube. If those Nazis can fly back and forth between here and Mars, why can’t they get television going? I think I’d prefer that, to watch those comedy shows, actually see what Bob Hope and Durante look like, than to walk around on Mars.
   Maybe that’s it, she thought as she put the magazine back on the rack. The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television? Anyhow, they killed most of the really great comedians. Because most of them were Jewish. In fact, she realized, they killed off most of the entertainment field. I wonder how Hope gets away with what he says. Of course, he has to broadcast from Canada. And it’s a little freer up there. But Hope really says things. Like the joke about Göring… the one where Göring buys Rome and has it shipped to his mountain retreat and then set up again. And revives Christianity so his pet lions will have something to– “Did you want to buy that magazine, miss?” the little dried-up old man who ran the drugstore called, with suspicion.
   Guiltily, she put down the Reader’s Digest which she had begun to thumb through.
   Again strolling along the sidewalk with her shopping bags, Juliana thought, Maybe Göring will be the new Fuhrer when that Bormann dies. He seems sort of different from the others. The only way that Bormann got it in the first place was to weasel in when Hitler realized how fast he was going. Old Göring was off in his mountain palace. Göring should have been Fuhrer after Hitler, because it was his Luftwaffe that knocked out those English radar stations and then finished off the RAF. Hitler would have had them bomb London, like they did Rotterdam.
   But probably Goebbels will get it, she decided. That was what everyone said. As long as that awful Heydrich doesn’t. He’d kill us all. He’s really bats.
   The one I like, she thought, is that Baldur von Schirach. He’s the only one who looks normal, anyhow. But he hasn’t got a chance.
   Turning, she ascended the steps to the front door of the old wooden building in which she lived.
   When she unlocked the door of her apartment she saw Joe Cinnadella still lying where she had left him, in the center of the bed, on his stomach, his arms dangling. He was still asleep.
   No, she thought. He can’t still be here; the truck’s gone. Did he miss it? Obviously.
   Going into the kitchen, she set her grocery bags on the table among the breakfast dishes.
   But did he intend to miss it? she asked herself. That’s what I wonder.
   What a peculiar man… he had been so active with her, going on almost all night. And yet it had been as if he were not actually there, doing it but never being aware. Thoughts on something else, maybe.
   From habit, she began putting food away in the old G.E. turret-top refrigerator. And then she began clearing the breakfast table.
   Maybe he’s done it so much, she decided, it’s second nature; his body makes the motions, like mine now as I put these plates and silver in the sink. Could do it with three-fifths of his brain removed, like the leg of a frog in biology class.
   “Hey,” she called. “Wake up.”
   In the bed, Joe stirred, snorted.
   “Did you hear the Bob Hope show the other night?” she called. “He told this really funny joke, the one where this German major is interviewing some Martians. The Martians can’t provide racial documentation about their grandparents being Aryan, you know. So the German major reports back to Berlin that Mars is populated by Jews.” Coming into the living room where Joe lay in the bed, she said, “And they’re about one foot tall, and have two heads… you know how Bob Hope goes on.”
   Joe had opened his eyes. He said nothing; he stared at her unwinkingly. His chin, black with stubble, his dark, achefilled eyes… she also became quiet, then.
   “What is it?” she said at last. “Are you afraid?” No, she thought; that’s Frank who’s afraid. This is—I don’t know what.
   “The rig went on,” Joe said, sitting up.
   “What are you going to do?” She seated herself on the edge of the bed, drying her arms and hands with the dish towel.
   “I’ll catch him on the return. He won’t say anything to anybody; he knows I’d do the same for him.”
   “You’ve done this before?” she asked.
   Joe did not answer. You meant to miss it, Juliana said to herself. I can tell; all at once I know.
   “Suppose he takes another route back?” she said.
   “He always take Fifty. Never Forty. He had an accident on Forty once; some horses got out in the road and he plowed into them. In the Rockies.” Picking up his clothes from the chair he began to dress.
   “How old are you, Joe?” she asked as she contemplated his naked body.
   “Thirty-four.”
   Then, she thought, you must have been in the war. She saw no obvious physical defects; he had, in fact, quite a good, lean body, with long legs. Joe, seeing her scrutiny, scowled and turned away. “Can’t I watch?” she asked, wondering why not. All night with him, and then this modesty. “Are we bugs?” she said. “We can’t stand the sight of each other in the daylight—we have to squeeze into the walls?”
   Grunting sourly, he started toward the bathroom in his underpants and socks, rubbing his chin.
   This is my home, Juliana thought. I’m letting you stay here, and yet you won’t allow me to look at you. Why do you want to stay, then? She followed after him, into the bathroom; he had begun running hot water in the bowl, to shave.
   On his arm, she saw a tattoo, a blue letter C.
   “What”s that?” she asked. “Your wife? Connie? Corinne?”
   Joe, washing his face, said, “Cairo.”
   What an exotic name, she thought with envy. And then she felt herself flush. “I’m really stupid,” she said. An Italian, thirty-four years old, from the Nazi part of the world… he had been in the war, all right. But on the Axis side. And he had fought at Cairo; the tattoo was their bond, the German and Italian veterans of that campaign—the defeat of the British and Australian army under General Gott at the hands of Rommel and his Afrika Korps.
   She left the bathroom, returned to the living room and began making the bed; her hands flew.
   In a neat stack on the chair lay Joe’s possessions, clothes and small suitcase, personal articles. Among them she noticed a velvet-covered box, a little like a glasses’ case; picking it up, she opened it and peeked inside.
   You certainly did fight at Cairo, she thought as she gazed down at the Iron Cross Second Class with the word and the date—June 10, 1945—engraved at its top. They didn’t all get this; only the valiant ones. I wonder what you did… you were only seventeen years old, then.
   Joe appeared at the door of the bathroom just as she lifted the medal from its velvet box; she became aware of him and jumped guiltily. But he did not seem angry.
   “I was just looking at it,” Juliana said. “I’ve never seen one before. Did Rommel pin it on you himself?”
   “General Bayerlain gave them out. Rommel had already been transferred to England, to finish up there.” His voice was calm. But his hand once more had begun the monotonous pawing at his forehead, fingers digging into his scalp in that combing motion which seemed to be a chronic nervous tic.
   “Would you tell me about it?” Juliana asked, as he returned to the bathroom and his shaving.
   As he shaved and, after that, took a long hot shower, Joe Cinnadella told her a little; nothing like the sort of account she would have liked to hear. His two older brothers had served in the Ethiopian campaign, while he, at thirteen had been in a Fascist youth organization in Milan, his home town. Later, his brothers had joined a crack artillery battery, that of Major Ricardo Pardi, and when World War Two began, Joe had been able to join them. They had fought under Graziani. Their equipment, especially their tanks, had been dreadful. The British had shot them down, even senior officers, like rabbits. Doors of the tanks had to be held shut with sandbags during battle, to keep them from flying open. Major Pardi, however, had reclaimed discarded artillery shells, polished and greased them, and fired them; his battery had halted General Wavell’s great desperate tank advanced in ‘43.
   “Are your brothers still alive?” Juliana asked.
   His brothers had been killed in ‘44, strangled with wire by British commandos, the Long Range Desert Group which had operated behind Axis lines and which had become especially fanatic during the last phases of the war when it was clear that the Allies could not win.
   “How do you feel about the British now?” she asked haltingly.
   Joe said, “I’d like to see them do to England what they did in Africa.” His tone was flat.
   “But it’s been—eighteen years,” Juliana said. “I know the British especially did terrible things. But—”
   “They talk about the things the Nazis did to the Jews,” Joe said. “The British have done worse. In the Battle of London.” He became silent. “Those fire weapons, phosphorus and oil; I saw a few of the German troops, afterward. Boat after boat burned to a cinder. Those pipes under the water—turned the sea to fire. And on civilian populations, by those mass fire-bombing raids that Churchill thought were going to save the war at the last moment. Those terror attacks on Hamburg and Essen and—”
   “Let’s not talk about it,” Juliana said. In the kitchen, she started cooking bacon; she turned on the small white plastic Emerson radio which Frank had given her on her birthday. “I’ll fix you something to eat.” She dialed, trying to find some light, pleasant music.
   “Look at this,” Joe said. In the living room, he sat on the bed, his small suitcase beside him; he had opened it and brought out a ragged, bent book which showed signs of much handling. He grinned at Juliana. “Come here. You know what somebody says? This man—” He indicated the book. “This is very funny. Sit down.” He took hold of her arm, drew her down beside him. “I want to read to you. Suppose they had won. What would it be like? We don’t have to worry; this man has done all the thinking for us.” Opening the book, Joe began turning pages slowly. “The British Empire would control all Europe. All the Mediterranean. No Italy at all. No Germany, either. Bobbies and those funny little soldiers in tall fur hats, and the king as far as the Volga.”
   In a low voice, Juliana said, “Would that be so bad?”
   “You read the book?”
   “No,” she admitted, peering to see the cover. She had heard about it, though; a lot of people were reading it. “But Frank and I—my former husband and I—often talked about how it would have been if the Allies had won the war.”
   Joe did not seem to hear her; he was staring down at the copy of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. “And in this,” he went on, “you know how it is that England wins? Beats the Axis?”
   She shook her head, feeling the growing tension of the man beside her. His chin now had begun to quiver; he licked his lips again and again, dug at his scalp… when he spoke his voice was hoarse.
   “He has Italy betray the Axis,” Joe said.
   “Oh,” she said.
   “Italy goes over to the Allies. Joins the Anglo-Saxons and opens up what he calls the “soft underbelly” of Europe. But that’s natural for him to think that. We all know the cowardly Italian Army that ran every time they saw the British. Drinking vino. Happy-go-lucky, not made for fighting. This fellow—” Joe closed the book, turned it around to study the back cover. “Abendsen. I don’t blame him. He writes this fantasy, imagines how the world would be if the Axis had lost. How else could they lose except by Italy being a traitor?” His voice grated. “The Duce—he was a clown; we all know that.”
   “I have to turn the bacon.” She slid away from him and hurried back to the kitchen.
   Following after her, still carrying the book, Joe went on, “And the U.S. comes in. After it licks the Japs. And after the war, the U.S. and Britain divide the world. Exactly like Germany and Japan did in reality.”
   Juliana said, “Germany, Japan, and Italy.” He stared at her.
   “You left out Italy.” She faced him calmly. Did you forget, too? she said to herself. Like everybody else? The little empire in the Middle East… the musical-comedy New Rome.
   Presently she served him a platter of bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, coffee. He ate readily.
   “What did they serve you in North Africa?” she asked as she, too, seated herself.
   Joe said, “Dead donkey.”
   “That’s hideous.”
   With a twisted grin, Joe said, “Asino Morte. The bully beef cans had the initials AM stamped on them. The Germans called it Alter Mann. Old Man.” He resumed his rapid eating.
   I would like to read this, Juliana thought as she reached to take the book from under Joe’s arm. Will he be here that long? The book had grease on it; pages were torn. Finger marks all over it. Read by truck drivers on the long haul, she thought. In the one-arm beaneries late at night… I’ll bet you’re a slow reader, she thought. I’ll bet you’ve been poring over this book for weeks, if not months.
   Opening the book at random, she read:


   …now in his old age he viewed tranquillity, domain such as the ancients would have coveted but not comprehended, ships from the Crimea to Madrid, and all the Empire, all with the same coin, speech, flag. The great old Union Jack dipping from sunrise to sunset: it had been fulfilled at last, that about the sun and the flag.


   “The only book I carry around,” Juliana said, “isn’t actually a book; it’s the oracle, the I Ching–Frank got me hooked on it and I use it all the time to decide. I never let it out of my sight. Ever.” She closed the copy of The Grasshopper. “Want to see it? Want to use it?”
   “No,” Joe said.
   Resting her chin on her folded arms on the table surface and gazing at him sideways, she said, “Have you moved in here permanently? And what are you up to?” Brooding over the insults, the slanders. You petrify me, she thought, with your hatred of life. But—you have something. You’re like a little animal, not important but smart. Studying his limited, clever dark face she thought, How could I ever have imagined you as younger than me? But even that’s true, your childishness; you are still the baby brother, worshiping your two older brothers and your Major Pardi and General Rommel, panting and sweating to break loose and get the Tommies. Did they actually garrote your brothers with loops of wire? We heard that, the atrocity stories and photos released after the war… She shuddered. But the British commandos were brought to trial and punished long ago.
   The radio had ceased playing music; there seemed to be a news program, racket of shortwave from Europe. The voice faded and became garbled. A long pause, nothing at all. Just silence. Then the Denver announcer, very clear, close by. She reached to turn the dial, but Joe stopped her hand.
   “… news of Chancellor Bormann’s death shocked a stunned Germany which had been assured as recently as yesterday…”
   he and Joe jumped to their feet.
   …all Reichs stations canceled scheduled programs and listeners, heard the solemn strains of the chorus of the SS Division Das Reich raised in the anthem of the Partei, the Horst Wessel Lied. Later, in Dresden, where the acting Partei Secretary and chiefs of the Sicherheitsdienst, the national security police which replaced the Gestapo following…”
   Joe turned the volume up.
   “… reorganization of the government at the instigation of the late Reichsfuhrer Himmler, Albert Speer and others, two weeks of official mourning were declared, and already many shops and businesses have closed, it was reported. As yet no word has come as to the expected convening of the Reichstag, the formal parliament of the Third Reich, whose approval is required…”
   “It’ll be Heydrich,” Joe said.
   “I wish it would be that big blond fellow, that Schirach,” she said. “Christ, so he finally died. Do you think Schirach has a chance?”
   “No,” Joe said shortly.
   “Maybe there’ll be a civil war now,” she said. “But those guys are so old now. Göring and Goebbels—all those old Party boys.”
   The radio was saying, “…reached at his retreat in the Alps near Brenner…”
   Joe said, “This’ll be Fat Hermann.”
   “… said merely that he was grief-stricken by the loss not only of a soldier and patriot and faithful Partei Leader, but also, as he has said many times over, of a personal friend, whom, one will recall, he backed in the interregnum dispute shortly after the war when it appeared for a time that elements hostile to Herr Bormann’s ascension to supreme authority—”
   Juliana shut the radio off.
   “They’re just babbling,” she said. “Why do they use words like that? Those terrible murderers are talked about as if they were like the rest of us.”
   “They are like us,” Joe said. He reseated himself and once more ate, “There isn’t anything they’ve done we wouldn’t have done if we’d been in their places. They saved the world from Communism. We’d be living under Red rule now, if it wasn’t for Germany. We’d be worse off.”
   “You’re just talking,” Juliana said. “Like the radio. Babbling.”
   “I been living under the Nazis,” Joe said. “I know what it’s like. Is that just talk, to live twelve, thirteen years—longer than that—almost fifteen years? I got a work card from OT; I worked for Organization Todt since 1947, in North Africa and the U.S.A. Listen—” He jabbed his finger at her. “I got the Italian genius for earthworks; OT gave me a high rating. I wasn’t shoveling asphalt and mixing concrete for the autobahns. I was helping design. Engineer. One day Doctor Todt came by and inspected what our work crew did. He said to me, “You got good hands.” That’s a big moment, Juliana. Dignity of labor; they’re not talking only words. Before them, the Nazis, everyone looked down on manual jobs; myself, too. Aristocratic. The Labor Front put an end to that. I seen my own hands for the first time.” He spoke so swiftly that his accent began to take over; she had trouble understanding him. “We all lived out there in the woods, in Upper State New York, like brothers. Sang songs. Marched to work. Spirit of the war, only rebuilding, not breaking down. Those were the best days of all, rebuilding after the war—fine, clean, long-lasting rows of public buildings block by block, whole new downtown, New York and Baltimore. Now of course that work’s past. Big cartels like New Jersey Krupp and Sohnen running the show. But that’s not Nazi; that’s just old European powerful. Worse, you hear? Nazis like Rommel and Todt a million times better men than industrialists like Krupp and bankers, all those Prussians; ought to have been gassed. All those gentlemen in vests.”
   But, Juliana thought, those gentlemen in vests are in forever. And your idols, Rommel and Doctor Todt; they just came in after hostilities, to clear the rubble, build the autobahns, start industry humming. They even let the Jews live, lucky surprise—amnesty so the Jews could pitch in. Until ‘49, anyhow… and then good-bye Todt and Rommel, retired to graze.
   Don’t I know? Juliana thought. Didn’t I hear all about it from Frank? You can’t tell me anything about life under the Nazis; my husband was—is—a Jew. I know that Doctor Todt was the most modest, gentle man that ever lived; I know all he wanted to do was provide work—honest, reputable work—for the millions of bleak-eyed, despairing American men and women picking through the ruins after the war. I know he wanted to see medical plans and vacation resorts and adequate housing for everyone, regardless of race; he was a builder, not a thinker… and in most cases he managed to create what he had wanted—he actually got it. But…
   A preoccupation, in the back of her mind, now rose decidedly. “Joe. This Grasshopper book; isn’t it banned in the East Coast?”
   He nodded.
   “How could you be reading it, then?” Something about it worried her. “Don’t they still shoot people for reading—”
   “It depends on your racial group. On the good old armband.”
   That was so. Slavs, Poles, Puerto Ricans, were the most limited as to what they could read, do, listen to. The Anglo-Saxons had it much better; there was public education for their children, and they could go to libraries and museums and concerts. But even so… The Grasshopper was not merely classified; it was forbidden, and to everyone.
   Joe said, “I read it in the toilet. I hid it in a pillow. In fact, I read it because it was banned.”
   “You’re very brave,” she said.
   Doubtfully he said, “You mean that sarcastically?”
   “No.”
   He relaxed a little. “It’s easy for you people here; you live a safe, purposeless life, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. Out of the stream of events, left over from the past; right?” His eyes mocked her.
   “You’re killing yourself,” she said, “with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.” She held his fork toward him; he accepted it. Eat, she thought. Or give up even the biological processes.
   As he ate, Joe nodded at the book and said, “That Abendsen lives around here, according to the cover. In Cheyenne. Gets perspective on the world from such a safe spot, wouldn’t you guess? Read what it ways; read it aloud.”
   Taking the book, she read the back part of the jacket. “He’s an ex-service man. He was in the U. S. Marine Corps in World War Two, wounded in England by a Nazi Tiger tank. A sergeant. It says he’s got practically a fortress that he writes in, guns all over the place.” Setting the book down, she said, “And it doesn’t say so here, but I heard someone say that he’s almost a sort of paranoid; charged barbed wire around the place, and it’s set in the mountains. Hard to get to.”
   “Maybe he’s right,” Joe said, “to live like that, after writing that book. The German bigwigs hit the roof when they read it.”
   “He was living that way before; he wrote the book there. His place is called—” She glanced at the book jacket. “The High Castle. That’s his pet name for it.”
   “They won’t get him,” Joe said, chewing rapidly. “He’s on the lookout. Smart.”
   She said, “I believe he’s got a lot of courage to write that book. If the Axis had lost the war, we’d be able to say and write anything we wanted, like we used to; we’d be one country and we’d have a fair legal system, the same one for all of us.”
   To her surprise, he nodded reasonably to that.
   “I don’t understand you,” she said. “What do you believe? What is it you want? You defend those monsters, those freaks who slaughtered the Jews, and then you—” Despairing, she caught hold of him by the ears; he blinked in surprise and pain as she rose to her feet, tugging him up with her.
   They faced each other, wheezing, neither able to speak.
   “Let me finish this meal you fixed for me,” Joe said at last.
   “Won’t you say? You won’t tell me? You do know what it is, yourself; you understand and you just go on eating, pretending you don’t have any idea what I mean.” She let go of his ears; they had been twisted until they were now bright red.
   “Empty talk,” Joe said. “It doesn’t matter. Like the radio, what you said of it. You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily… in the street brawls.”
   “If you feel like that about me,” Juliana said, “why don’t you go on? What are you staying here for?”
   His enigmatic grimace chilled her.
   I wish I had never let him come with me, she thought. And now it’s too late; I know I can’t get rid of him—he’s too strong.
   Something terrible is happening, she thought. Coming out of him. And I seem to be helping it.
   “What’s the matter?” He reached out, chucked her beneath the chin, stroked her neck, put his fingers under her shirt and pressed her shoulders affectionately. “A mood. Your problem—I’ll analyze you free.”
   “They’ll call you a Jew analyst.” She smiled feebly. “Do you want to wind up in an oven?”
   “You’re scared of men. Right?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “It was possible to tell last night. Only because I—” He cut his sentence off. “Because I took special care to notice your wants.”
   “Because you’ve gone to bed with so many girls,” Juliana said, “that’s what you started to say.”
   “But I know I’m right. Listen; I’ll never hurt you, Juliana. On my mother’s body—I give you my word. I’ll be specially considerate, and if you want to make an issue out of my experience—I’ll give you the advantage of that. You’ll lose your jitters; I can relax you and improve you, in not very much time, either. You’ve just had bad luck.”
   She nodded, cheered a bit. But she still felt cold and sad, and she still did not know quite why.

   To begin his day, Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi took a moment to be alone. He sat in his office in the Nippon Times Building and contemplated.
   Already, before he had left his house to come to his office, he had received Ito’s report on Mr. Baynes. There was no doubt in the young student’s mind; Mr. Baynes was not a Swede. Mr. Baynes was most certainly a German national.
   But Ito’s ability to handle Germanic languages had never impressed either the Trade Missions or the Tokkoka, the Japanese secret police. The fool possibly has sniffed out nothing to speak of, Mr. Tagomi thought to himself. Maladroit enthusiasm, combined with romantic doctrines. Detect, always with suspicion.
   Anyhow, the conference with Mr. Baynes and the elderly individual from the Home Islands would begin soon, in due course, whatever national Mr. Baynes was. And Mr. Tagomi liked the man. That was, he decided, conceivably the basic talent of the man highly placed—such as himself. To know a good man when he met him. Intuition about people. Cut through all ceremony and outward form. Penetrate to the heart.
   The heart, locked within two yin lines of black passion. Strangled, sometimes, and yet, even then, the light of yang, the flicker at the center. I like him, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. German or Swede. I hope the zaracaine helped his headache. Must recall to inquire, first off the bat.
   His desk intercom buzzed.
   “No,” he said brusquely into it. “No discussion. This is moment for Inner Truth. Introversion.”
   From the tiny speaker Mr. Ramsey’s voice: “Sir, news has just come from the press service below. The Reichs Chancellor is dead. Martin Bormann.” Ramsey’s voice popped off. Silence.
   Mr. Tagomi thought, Cancel all business for today. He rose from his desk and paced rapidly back and forth, pressing his hands together. Let me see. Dispatch at once formal note to Reichs Consul. Minor item; subordinate can accomplish. Deep sorrow, etc. All Japan joins with German people in this sad hour. Then? Become vitally receptive. Must be in position to receive information from Tokyo instantly.
   Pressing the intercom button he said, “Mr. Ramsey, be sure we are through to Tokyo. Tell the switchboard girls, be alert. Must not miss communication.”
   “Yes, sir,” Mr. Ramsey said.
   “I will be in my office from now on. Thwart all routine matters. Turn back any and all callers whose business is customary.”
   “Sir?”
   “My hands must be free in case sudden activity is needed.”
   “Yes sir.”
   Half an hour later, at nine, a message arrived from the highest-ranking Imperial Government official on the West Coast, the Japanese Ambassador to the Pacific States of America, the Honorable Baron L. B. Kaelemakule. The Foreign Office had called an extraordinary session at the embassy building on Sutter Street, and each Trade Mission was to send a highly placed personage to attend. In this case, it meant Mr. Tagomi himself.
   There was no time to change clothes. Mr. Tagomi hurried to the express elevator, descended to the ground floor, and a moment later was on his way by Mission limousine, a black 1940 Cadillac driven by an experienced uniformed Chinese chauffeur.
   At the embassy building he found other dignitaries’ cars parked roundabout, a dozen in all. Highly placed worthies, some of whom he knew, some of whom were strangers to him, could be seen ascending the wide steps of the embassy building, filing on inside. Mr. Tagomi’s chauffeur held the door open, and he stepped out quickly, gripping his briefcase, it was empty, because he had no papers to bring—but it was essential to avoid appearance of being mere spectator. He strode up the steps in a manner suggesting a vital role in the happenings, although actually he had not even been told what this meeting would cover.
   Small knots of personages had gathered; murmured discussions in the lobby. Mr. Tagomi joined several individuals whom he knew, nodding his head and looking—with them—solemn.
   An embassy employee appeared presently and directed them into a large hall. Chairs setup, folding type. All persons filed in, seated themselves silently except for coughing and shuffling. Talk had ceased.
   Toward the front a gentleman with handful of papers, making way up to slightly raised table. Striped pants: representative from Foreign Office.
   Bit of confusion. Other personages, discussing in low tones; heads bowed together.
   “Sirs,” the Foreign Office person said in loud, commanding voice. All eyes fixed then on him. “As you know, the Reichskanzler is now confirmed as dead. Official statement from Berlin. This meeting, which will not last long– you will soon be able to go back to your offices—is for purposes of informing you of our evaluation of several contending factions in German political life who can now be expected to step forth and engage in no-holds-barred disputation for spot evacuated by Herr Bormann.
   “Briefly, the notables. The foremost, Hermann Göring. Bear with familiar details, please.
   “The Fat One, so-called, due to body, originally courageous air ace in First World War, founded Gestapo and held post in Prussian Government of vast power. One of the most ruthless early Nazis, yet later sybaritic excesses gave rise to misguiding picture of amiable wine-tippling disposition which our government urges you to reject. This man although said to be unhealthy, possibly even morbidly so in terms of appetites, resembles more the self-gratifying ancient Roman Caesars whose power grew rather than abated as age progressed. Lurid picture of this person in toga with pet lions, owning immense castle filled with trophies and art objects, is no doubt accurate. Freight trains of stolen valuables made way to his private estates over military needs in wartime. Our evaluation: this man craves enormous power, and is capable of obtaining it. Most self-indulgent of all Nazis, and is in sharp contrast to late H. Himmler, who lived in personal want at low salary. Herr Göring representative of spoils mentality, using power as means of acquiring personal wealth. Primitive mentality, even vulgar, but quite intelligent man, possibly most intelligent of all Nazi chiefs. Object of his drives; self-glorification in ancient emperor fashion.
   “Next. Herr J. Goebbels. Suffered polio in youth. Originally Catholic. Brilliant orator, writer, flexible and fanatic mind, witty, urbane, cosmopolitan. Much active with ladies. Elegant. Educated. Highly capable. Does much work; almost frenzied managerial drive. Is said never to rest. Much respected personage. Can be charming, but is said to have rabid streak unmatched by other Nazi’s. Ideological orientation suggesting medieval Jesuitic viewpoint exacerbated by post-Romantic Germanic nihilism. Considered sole authentic intellectual of the Partei. Had ambitions to be playwright in youth. Few friends. Not liked by subordinates, but nevertheless highly polished product of many best elements in European culture. Not self-gratification, is underlying ambition, but power for its use purely. Organizational attitude in classic Prussian State sense.
   “Herr R. Heydrich.”
   The Foreign Office official paused, glanced up and around at them all. Then resumed.
   “Much younger individual than above, who helped original Revolution in 1932. Career man with elite SS Subordinate of H. Himmler, may have played role in Himmler’s not yet fully explained death in 1948. Officially eliminated other contestants within police apparatus such as A. Eichinann, W. Schellenberg, et al. This man said to be feared by many Partei people. Responsible for controlling Wehrmacht elements after close of hostilities in famous clash between police and army which led to reorganization of governmental apparatus, out of all this the NSDAP emerging victor. Supported M. Bormann throughout. Product of elite training and yet anterior to so-called SS Castle system. Said to be devoid of affective mentality in traditional sense. Enigmatic in terms of drive. Possibly may be said to have view of society which holds human struggle to be series of games; peculiar quasiscientific detachment found also in certain technological circles. Not party to ideological disputes. Summation: can be called most modern in mentality; post-enlightenment type, dispensing with so-called necessary illusions such as belief in God, etc. Meaning of this so-called realistic mentality cannot be fathomed by social scientists in Tokyo, so this man must be considered a question mark. However, notice of resemblance to deterioration of affectivity in pathological schizophrenia should be made.”
   Mr. Tagomi felt ill as he listened.
   “Baldur von Schirach. Former head of Hitler Youth. Considered idealist. Personally attractive in appearance, but considered not highly experienced or competent. Sincere believer in goals of Partei. Took responsibility for draining Mediterranean and reclaiming of huge areas of farmland. Also mitigated vicious policies of racial extermination in Slavic lands in early ‘fifties. Pled case directly to German people for remnant of Slavic peoples to exist on reservationlike closed regions in Heartland area. Called for end of certain forms of mercy killings and medical experimentation, but failed here.
   “Doctor Seyss-Inquart. Former Austrian Nazi, now in charge of Reich colonial areas, responsible for colonial policies. Possibly most hated man in Reich territory. Said to have instigated most if not all repressive measures dealing with conquered peoples. Worked with Rosenberg for ideological victories of most alarming grandiose type, such as attempt to sterilize entire Russian population remaining after close of hostilities. No facts for certain on this, but considered to be one of several responsible for decision to make holocaust of African continent thus creating genocide conditions for Negro population. Possibly closest in temperament to original Fuhrer, A. Hitler.”
   The Foreign Office spokesman ceased his dry, slow recitation.
   Mr. Tagomi thought, I think I am going mad.
   I have to get out of here; I am having an attack. My body is throwing up things or spurting them out—I am dying. He scrambled to his feet, pushed down the aisle past other chairs and people. He could hardly see. Get to lavatory. He ran up the aisle.
   Several heads turned. Saw him. Humiliation. Sick at important meeting. Lost place. He ran on, through the open door held by embassy employee.
   At once the panic ceased. His gaze ceased to swim; he saw objects once more. Stable floor, walls.
   Attack of vertigo. Middle-ear malfunction, no doubt.
   He thought, Diencephalon, ancient brainstem, acting up.
   Some organic momentary breakdown.
   Think along reassuring lines. Recall order of world. What to draw on? Religion? He thought, Now a gavotte perform sedately. Capital both, capital both; you’ve caught it nicely. This is the style of thing precisely. Small form of recognizable world, Gondoliers. G. & S. He shut his eyes, imagined the D’Oyle Carte Company as he had seen them on their tour after the war. The finite, finite world.
   An embassy employee, at his elbow, saying, “Sir, can I give you assistance?”
   Mr. Tagomi bowed, “I am recovered.”
   The other’s face, calm, considerate. No derision. They are all laughing at me, possibly? Mr. Tagomi thought. Down underneath?
   There is evil! It’s actual like cement.
   I can’t believe it. I can’t stand it. Evil is not a view. He wandered about the lobby, hearing the traffic on Sutter Street, the Foreign Office spokesman addressing the meeting. All our religion is wrong. What’ll I do? he asked himself. He went to the front door of the embassy; an employee opened it, and Mr. Tagomi walked down the steps to the path. The parked cars. His own. Chauffeurs standing.
   It’s an ingredient in us. In the world. Poured over us, filtering into our bodies, minds, hearts, into the pavement itself.
   Why?
   We’re blind moles. Creeping through the soil, feeling with our snouts. We know nothing. I perceived this… now I don’t know where to go. Screech with fear, only. Run away.
   Pitiful.
   Laugh at me, he thought as he saw the chauffeurs regarding him as he walked to his car. Forgot my briefcase. Left it back there, by my chair. All eyes on him as he nodded to his chauffeur. Door held open; he crept into his car.
   Take me to the hospital, he thought. No, take me back to the office. “Nippon Times Building.” he said aloud. “Drive slowly.” He watched the city, the cars, stores, tall buildings, now, very modern. People. All the men and women, going on their separate businesses.
   When he reached his office he instructed Mr. Ramsey to contact one of the other Trade Missions, the Non-Ferrous Ores Mission, and to request that their representative to the Foreign Office meeting contact him on his return.
   Shortly before noon, the call came through.
   “Possibly you noticed my distress at meeting,” Mr. Tagomi said into the phone. “It was no doubt palpable to all, especially my hasty flight.”
   “I saw nothing,” the Non-Ferrous man said. “But after the meeting I did not see you and wondered what had become of you.”
   “You are tactful,” Mr. Tagomi said bleakly.
   “Not at all. I am sure everyone was too wrapped up in the Foreign Office lecture to pay heed to any other consideration. As to what occurred after your departure—did you stay through the rundown of aspirants in the power struggle? That comes first.”
   “I heard to the part about Doctor Seyss-Inquart.”
   “Following that, the speaker dilated on the economic situation over there. The Home Islands take the view that Germany’s scheme to reduce the populations of Europe and Northern Asia to the status of slaves—plus murdering all intellectuals, bourgeois elements, patriotic youth and what not—has been an economic catastrophe. Only the formidable technological achievements of German science and industry have saved them. Miracle weapons, so to speak.”
   “Yes,” Mr. Tagomi said. Seated at his desk, holding the phone with one hand, he poured himself a cup of hot tea. “As did their miracle weapons V-one and V-two and their jet fighters in the war.”
   “It is a sleight-of-hand business,” the Non-Ferrous Ores man said. “Mainly, their uses of atomic energy have kept things together. And the diversion of their circus-like rocket travel to Mars and Venus. He pointed out that for all their thrilling import, such traffic have yielded nothing of economic worth.”
   “But they are dramatic,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   “His prognosis was gloomy. He feels that most high-placed Nazis are refusing to face facts vis-à-vis their economic plight. By doing so, they accelerate the tendency toward greater tour de force adventures, less predictability, less stability in general. The cycle of manic enthusiasm, then fear, then Partei solutions of a desperate type—well, the point he got across was that all this tends to bring the most irresponsible and reckless aspirants to the top.”
   Mr. Tagomi nodded.
   “So we must presume that the worst, rather than the best, choice will be made. The sober and responsible elements will be defeated in the present clash.”
   “Who did he say was the worst?” Mr. Tagomi said.
   “R. Heydrich. Doctor Seyss-Inquart. H. Göring. In the Imperial Government’s opinion.”
   “And the best?”
   “Possibly B. von Schirach and Doctor Goebbels. But on that he was less explicit.”
   “Anything more?”
   “He told us that we must have faith in the Emperor and the Cabinet at this time more than ever. That we can look toward the Palace with confidence.”
   “Was there a moment of respectful silence?”
   “Yes.”
   Mr. Tagomi thanked the Non-Ferrous Ores man and rang off.
   As he sat drinking his tea, the intercom buzzed. Miss Ephreikian’s voice came: “Sir, you had wanted to send a message to the German consul.” A pause. “Did you wish to dictate it to me at this time?”
   That is so, Mr. Tagomi realized. I had forgotten. “Come into the office,” he said.
   Presently she entered, smiling at him hopefully. “You are feeling better, sir?”
   “Yes. An injection of vitamins has helped.” He considered. “Recall to me. What is the German consul’s name?”
   “I have that, sir. Freiherr Hugo Reiss.”
   “Mein Herr,” Mr. Tagomi began. “Shocking news has arrived that your leader, Herr Martin Bormann, has succumbed. Tears rise to my eyes as I write these words. When I recall the bold deeds perpetrated by Herr Bormann in securing the salvation of the German people from her enemies both at home and abroad, as well as the soul-shaking measures of sternness meted out to the shirkers and traitors who would betray all mankind’s vision of the cosmos, into which now the blond-haired blue-eyed Nordic races have after aeons plunged in their—” He stopped. There was no way to finish. Miss Ephreikian stopped her tape recorder, waiting.
   “These are great times,” he said.
   “Should I record that, sir? Is that the message?” Uncertainly she started up her machine.
   “I was addressing you,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   She smiled.
   “Play my utterances back,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   The tape transport spun. Then he heard his voice, tiny and metallic, issuing from the two-inch speaker. “… perpetrated by Herr Bormann in securing the salvation…” He listened to the insectlike squeak as it rambled on. Cortical flappings and scrapings, he thought.
   “I have the conclusion,” he said, when the transport ceased turning. “Determination to exhalt and immolate themselves and so obtain a niche in history from which no life form can cast them, no matter what may transpire.” He paused. “We are all insects,” he said to Miss Ephreikian. “Groping toward something terrible or divine. Do you not agree?” He bowed. Miss Ephreikian, seated with her tape recorder, made a slight bow back.
   “Send that,” he told her. “Sign it, et cetera. Work the sentences, if you wish, so that they will mean something.” As she started from the office he added, “Or so that they mean nothing. Whichever you prefer.”
   As she opened the office dour she glanced at him curiously.
   After she had left he began work on routine matters of the day. But almost at once Mr. Ramsey was on the intercom. “Sir, Mr. Baynes is calling.”
   Good, Mr. Tagomi thought. Now we can begin important discussion. “Put him on,” he said, picking up the phone.
   “Mr. Tagomi,” Mr. Baynes’ voice came.
   “Good afternoon. Due to news of Chancellor Bormann’s death I was unexpectedly out of my office this morning. However—”
   “Did Mr. Yatabe get in touch with you?”
   “Not yet,” Mr. Tagomi said.
   “Did you tell your staff to keep an eye open for him?” Mr. Baynes said. He sounded agitated.
   “Yes,” Mr. Tagomi said. “They will usher him in directly he arrives.” He made a mental note to tell Mr. Ramsey; as yet he had not gotten around to it. Are we not to begin discussions, then, until the old gentleman puts in his appearance? He felt dismay. “Sir,” he began. “I am anxious to begin. Are you about to present your injection molds to us? Although we have been in confusion today—”
   “There has been a change,” Mr. Baynes said. “We’ll wait for Mr. Yatabe. You’re sure he hasn’t arrived? I want you to give me your word that you’ll notify me as soon as he calls you. Please exert yourself, Mr. Tagomi.” Mr. Baynes’ voice sounded strained, jerky.
   “I give you my word.” Now he, too, felt agitation. The Bormann death; that had caused the change. “Meanwhile,” he said rapidly, “I would enjoy your company, perhaps at lunch today. I not having had opportunity to have my lunch, yet.” Improvising, he continued. “Although we will wait on specifics, perhaps we could ruminate on general world conditions, in particular—”
   “No,” Mr. Baynes said.
   No? Mr. Tagomi thought. “Sir,” he said, “I am not well today. I had a grievous incident; it was my hope to confide it to you.”
   “I’m sorry,” Mr. Baynes said. “I’ll ring you back later.” The phone clicked. He had abruptly hung up.
   I offended him, Mr. Tagomi thought. He must have gathered correctly that I tardily failed to inform my staff about the old gentleman. But it is a trifle; he pressed the intercom button and said, “Mr. Ramsey, please come into my office.” I can correct that immediately. More is involved, he decided. The Bormann death has shaken him.
   A trifle—and yet indicative of my foolish and feckless attitude. Mr. Tagomi felt guilt. This is not a good day. I should have consulted the oracle, discovered what Moment it is. I have drifted far from the Tao; that is obvious.
   Which of the sixty-four hexagrams, he wondered, am I laboring under? Opening his desk drawer he brought out the I Ching and laid the two volumes on the desk. So much to ask the sages. So many questions inside me which I can barely articulate…
   When Mr. Ramsey entered the office, he had already obtained the hexagram. “Look, Mr. Ramsey.” He showed him the book.
   The hexagram was Forty-Seven. Oppression—Exhaustion.
   “A bad omen, generally,” Mr. Ramsey said. “What is your question, sir? If I’m not offending you to ask.”
   “I inquired as to the Moment,” Mr. Tagomi said. “The Moment for us all. No moving lines. A static hexagram.” He shut the book.

   At three o’clock that afternoon, Frank Frink, still waiting with his business partner for Wyndam-Matson’s decision about the money, decided to consult the oracle. How are things going to turn out? he asked, and threw the coins.
   The hexagram was Forty-seven. He obtained one moving line, Nine in the fifth place.


   His nose and feet are cut off.
   Oppression at the hands of the man with the purple knee bands.
   Joy comes softly.
   It furthers one to make offerings and libations.


   For a long time—at least half an hour—he studied the line and the material connected with it, trying to figure out what it might mean. The hexagram, and especially the moving line, disturbed him. At last he concluded reluctantly that the money would not be forthcoming.
   “You rely on that thing too much,” Ed McCarthy said.
   At four o’clock, a messenger from W-M Corporation appeared and handed Frink and McCarthy a manila envelope. When they opened it they found inside a certified check for two thousand dollars.
   “So you were wrong,” McCarthy said.
   Frink thought, Then the oracle must refer to some future consequence of this. That is the trouble; later on, when it has happened, you can look back and see exactly what it meant. But now–
   “We can start setting up the shop,” McCarthy said. “Today? Right now?” He felt weary.
   “Why not? We’ve got our orders made out; all we have to do is stick them in the mail. The sooner the better. And the stuff we can get locally we’ll pick up ourselves.” Putting on his jacket. Ed moved to the door of Frink’s room.
   They had talked Frink’s landlord into renting them the basement of the building. Now it was used for storage. Once the cartons were out, they could build their bench, put in wiring, lights, begin to mount their motors and belts. They had drawn up sketches, specifications, parts lists. So they had actually already begun.
   We’re in business, Frank Frink realized. They had even agreed on a name.


EDFRANK CUSTOM JEWELERS

   “The most I can see today,” he said, “is buying the wood for the bench, and maybe electrical parts. But no jewelry supplies.”
   They went, then, to a lumber supply yard in south San Francisco. By the end of an hour they had their wood.
   “What’s bothering you?” Ed McCarthy said as they entered a hardware store that dealt on a wholesale basis.
   “The money. It gets me down. To finance things that way.”
   “Old W-M understands,” McCarthy said.
   I know, Frink thought. That’s why it gets me down. We have entered the world. We’re like him. Is that a pleasant thought?
   “Don’t look back,” McCarthy said. “Look ahead. To the business.”
   I am looking ahead, Frink thought. He thought of the hexagram. What offerings and libations can I make? And to whom?