Marathe rose slightly on his stumps in the chair, showing some emotions at this Steeply. 'I am seated here appalled at the naivete of history of your nation. Paris and Helen were the excuse excuse of the war. All the Greek states in addition to the Sparta of Menelaus attacked Troy because Troy controlled the Dardanelles and charged the ruinous tolls for pa.s.sage through, which the Greeks, who would like very dearly the easy sea pa.s.sage for trade with the Oriental East, resented with fury. It was for commerce, this war. The one-quotes "love" one-does-not-quote of Paris for Helen merely was the excuse.' of the war. All the Greek states in addition to the Sparta of Menelaus attacked Troy because Troy controlled the Dardanelles and charged the ruinous tolls for pa.s.sage through, which the Greeks, who would like very dearly the easy sea pa.s.sage for trade with the Oriental East, resented with fury. It was for commerce, this war. The one-quotes "love" one-does-not-quote of Paris for Helen merely was the excuse.'

Steeply, genius of interviewing, sometimes affected more than usual idiocy with Marathe, which he knew baited Marathe. 'Everything reduces itself to politics for you guys. Wasn't that whole war just a song? Did that war even really take place, that anybody knows of?'

'The point is that what launches vessels of war is the state and community and its interests,' Marathe said without heat, tiredly. 'You only wish to enjoy to pretend for yourself that the love of one woman could do this, launch so many vessels of alliance.'

Steeply was stroking the perimeters of the mesquite-scratch, which made his shrug appear awkward. 'I don't think I'd be so sure. Those around Rod the G.o.d say the man would die twice for her. Say he wouldn't have to even think about it. Not just that he'd let the whole of O.N.A.N. come down, if it came to that. But'd die.'

Marathe sniffed. 'Twice.'

'Without even having to pause and think,' Steeply said, stroking at his lip's electrolysistic rash in a ruminative fashion. 'It's the reason most of us think he's still there, why he's still got President Gentle's ear. Divided loyalties are one thing. But if he does it for love love - well then you've got a kind of tragic element that transcends the political, wouldn't you say?' Steeply smiled broadly down at Marathe. - well then you've got a kind of tragic element that transcends the political, wouldn't you say?' Steeply smiled broadly down at Marathe.

Marathe's own sbetrayal of A.F.R.: for medical care for the conditions of his wife; for (Steeply might imagine to think) love of a person, a woman. 'Tragic saying as if Rodney Tine of Nonspecificity were not responsible for choosing it, as the insane are not responsible,' said Marathe quietly. saying as if Rodney Tine of Nonspecificity were not responsible for choosing it, as the insane are not responsible,' said Marathe quietly.

Steeply now was smiling even more broadly. 'It has a kind of tragic quality, timeless, musical, that how could Gentle resist?'

Marathe's tone now became derisive despite his legendary sangfroid in matters of technical interviews: 'These sentiments from a person who allows them to place him in the field as an enormous girl with t.i.ts at the c.o.c.k-eyed angle, now discoursing on tragic love.'

Steeply, impa.s.sive and slackly ruminative, picked at the lipstick of the corner of his mouth with a littlest finger, removing some grain of grit, gazing out from their shelf of stone. 'But sure. The fanatically patriotic Wheelchair a.s.sa.s.sins of southern Quebec scorn this type of interpersonal sentiment between people.' Looking now down at Marathe. 'No? Even though it's just this that has brought you Tine, yours for Luria to command, should it ever come to that?'

Marathe had settled back on his bottom in the chair. 'Your U.S.A. word for fanatic, "fanatic," do they teach you it comes from the Latin for "temple"? It is meaning, literally, "worshipper at the temple." '

'Oh Jesus now here we go again,' Steeply said.

'As, if you will give the permission, does this love love you speak of, M. Tine's grand love. It means only the you speak of, M. Tine's grand love. It means only the attachment attachment. Tine is attached, fanatically. Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith.'

Steeply made motions of weary familiarity. 'Herrrrrre we go.'

Marathe ignored this. 'Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. only pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you.'

'How are your wife and kids doing, up there, by the way?'

'You U.S.A.'s do not seem to believe you may each choose what to die for. Love of a woman, the s.e.xual, it bends back in on the self, makes you narrow, maybe crazy. Choose with care. Love of your nation, your country and people, it enlarges the heart. Something bigger than the self.'

Steeply laid a hand between his misdirected b.r.e.a.s.t.s: 'Ohh... Canada....'

Marathe leaned again forward on his stumps. 'Make amus.e.m.e.nt all you wish. But choose with care. You are what you love. No? You are, completely and only, what you would die for without, as you say, the thinking twice. thinking twice. You, M. Hugh Steeply: you would die without thinking for what?' You, M. Hugh Steeply: you would die without thinking for what?'

The A.F.R.'s extensive file on Steeply included mention of his recent divorce. Marathe already had informed Steeply of the existence of this file. He wondered how badly Steeply doubted what he reported, Marathe, or whether he a.s.sumed its truth simply. Though the persona of him changed, Steeply's car for all field a.s.signments was this green sedan subsidized by a painful ad for aspirin upon its side - the file knew this stupidity - Marathe was sure the sedan with its aspirin advertis.e.m.e.nt was somewhere below them, unseen. The fanatically beloved car of M. Hugh Steeply. Steeply was watching or gazing at the darkness of the desert floor. He did not respond. His expression of boredom could be real or tactical, either of these.

Marathe said, 'This, is it not the choice of the most supreme importance? Who teaches your U.S.A. children how to choose their temple? What to love enough not to think two times?'

'This from a man who -'

Marathe was willing that his voice not rise. 'For this choice determines all else. No? All other of our you say free free choices follow from this: what is our temple. What is the temple, thus, for U.S.A.'s? What is it, when you fear that you must protect them from themselves, if wicked Quebecers conspire to bring the Entertainment into their warm homes?' choices follow from this: what is our temple. What is the temple, thus, for U.S.A.'s? What is it, when you fear that you must protect them from themselves, if wicked Quebecers conspire to bring the Entertainment into their warm homes?'

Steeply's face had a.s.sumed the openly twisted sneering expression which he knew well Quebecers found repellent on Americans. 'But you a.s.sume it's always choice, conscious, decision. This isn't just a little naive, Remy? You sit down with your little accountant's ledger and soberly decide what to love? Always?'

'The alternatives are -'

'What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love love? without deciding? You just do do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?'

Marathe's sniff held disdain. 'Then in such a case your temple is self and sentiment. Then in such an instance you are a fanatic of desire, a slave to your individual subjective narrow self's sentiments; a citizen of nothing. You become a citizen of nothing. You are by yourself and alone, kneeling to yourself.'

A silence ensued this.

Marathe shifted in his chair. 'In a case such as this you become the slave who believes he is free. The most pathetic of bondage. Not tragic. No songs. You believe you would die twice for another but in truth would die only for your alone self, its sentiment.'

Another silence ensued. Steeply, who had made his early career with Unspecified Services conducting technical interviews, 44 44 used silent pauses as integral parts of his techniques of interface. Here it defused Marathe. Marathe felt the ironies of his position. One strap of Steeply's prostheses' bra.s.siere had slipped into view below his shoulder, where it cut deeply into his flesh of the upper arm. The air smelled faintly of creosote, but much less strongly smelling than the ties of train tracks, which Marathe had smelled at close range. Steeply's back was broad and soft. Marathe eventually said: used silent pauses as integral parts of his techniques of interface. Here it defused Marathe. Marathe felt the ironies of his position. One strap of Steeply's prostheses' bra.s.siere had slipped into view below his shoulder, where it cut deeply into his flesh of the upper arm. The air smelled faintly of creosote, but much less strongly smelling than the ties of train tracks, which Marathe had smelled at close range. Steeply's back was broad and soft. Marathe eventually said: 'You in such a case have nothing. You stand on nothing. Nothing of ground or rock beneath your feet. You fall; you blow here and there. How does one say: "tragically, unvoluntarily, lost." '

Another silence ensued. Steeply farted mildly. Marathe shrugged. The B.S.S. Field Operative Steeply may not have been truly sneering. The city Tucson's lume appeared a bleached and ghostly white in the unhumid air. Crepuscular animals rustled and perhaps scuttled. Dense and unbeautiful spider webs of the poisonous U.S.A. species of spider Black Widow were beneath the shelf and the incline's other outcroppings. And when the wind hit certain angles in the mountainside it moaned. Marathe thought of his victory over the train that had taken his legs. 45 45 He attempted in English to sing: He attempted in English to sing: ' "Oh Say, Land of the Free."'

And they both could feel this queer dry night-desert chill descend with the moon's gibbous rise - a powdery wind down below making dust to shift and cactus needles whistle, the sky's stars adjusting to the color of low flame - but were themselves not yet chilled, even Steeply's sleeveless dress: he and Marathe stood and sat in the form-fitting astral s.p.a.cesuit of warmth their own radiant heat produced. This is what happens in dry night climes, Marathe was learning. His dying wife had never once left southwestern Quebec. Les a.s.sa.s.sins des Fauteuils Roulents' remote embryonic disseminatory Ops base down here in Southwest U.S.A. seemed to him like the surface of the moon: four corrugated Quonsets and kiln-baked earth and air that swam and shimmered like the area behind jet engines. Empty and dirty-windowed rooms, doork.n.o.bs hot to touch and h.e.l.l-stench inside the empty rooms.

Steeply was continuing saying nothing while he tamped down another of his long Belgian cigarettes. Marathe continued to hum the U.S.A. song, all over the map in terms of key.

3 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U.

'Because none of them really meant any of it,' Hal tells Kent Blott. 'The end-of-the-day hatred of all the work is just part of the work. You think Scht.i.tt and deLint don't know we're going to sit in there together after showers and b.i.t.c.h? It's all planned out. The b.i.t.c.hers and moaners in there are just doing what's expected.'

'But I look at these guys that've been here six, seven years, eight years, still suffering, hurt, beat up, so tired, just like I feel tired and suffer, I feel this what, dread, this dread, I see seven or eight years of unhappiness every day and day after day of tiredness and stress and suffering stretching ahead, and for what, for a chance at a like a pro career that I'm starting to get this dready feeling a career in the Show means even more more suffering, if I'm skeletally stressed from all the grueling here by the time I get there.' suffering, if I'm skeletally stressed from all the grueling here by the time I get there.'

Blott's on his back on the s.h.a.g carpet - all five of them are - stretched out splay-limbed with their heads up supported on double-width velourish throw-pillows on the floor of V.R.6, one of the three little Viewing Rooms on the second floor of the Comm.-Ad. Bldg., two flights up from the locker rooms and three from the main tunnel's mouth. The room's new cartridge-viewer is huge and almost painfully high-definition; it hangs flat on the north wall like a large painting; it runs off a refrigerated chip; the room's got no TP or phone-console; it's very specialized, just a player and viewer, and tapes; the cartridge-player sits on the second shelf of a small bookcase beneath the viewer; the other shelves and several other cases are full of match-cartridges, motivational and visualization cartridges - InterLace, Tatsuoka, Yus.h.i.tyu, SyberVision. The 300-track wire from the cartridge-player up to the lower-right corner of the wall-hung viewer is so thin it looks like a crack in the wall's white paint. Viewing Rooms are windowless and the air from the vent is stale. Though when the viewer's on it looks like the room has a window.

Hal's put on an undemanding visualization-type cartridge, as he usually does for a Big Buddy group-interface when they're all tired. He's killed the volume, so you can't hear the reinforcing mantra, but the picture is bright and bell-clear. It's like the picture almost leaps out at you. A graying and somewhat ravaged-looking Stan Smith in anachronistic white is at a court's baseline hitting textbook forehands, over and over again, the same stroke, his back sort of osteoporotically hunched but his form immaculate, his foot-work textbook and effortless - the frictionless pivot and back-set of weight, the anachronistic Wilson wood stick back and pointing straight to the fence behind him, the fluid transfer of weight to the front foot as the ball comes in, the contact at waist-level and just out front, the front leg's muscles bunching up as the back leg's settle, eyes glued to the yellow ball in the center of his strings' stencilled W - E.T.A. kids are conditioned to watch not just the ball but the ball's rotating seams, to read the spin coming in - the front knee dipping slightly down under bulging quads as the weight flows more forward, the back foot up almost en-pointe en-pointe on the gleaming sneaker's unscuffed toe, the no-nonsense flourishless follow-through so the stick ends up just in front of his gaunt face - Smith's cheeks have hollowed as he's aged, his face has collapsed at the sides, his eyes seem to bulge from the cheekbones that protrude as he inhales after impact, he looks desiccated, aged in hot light, performing the same motions over and over, for decades, his other hand floating up gently to grasp the stick's throat out in front of the face so he's flowed back into the Ready Stance all over again. No wasted motion, egoless strokes, no flourishes or tics or excesses of wrist. Over and over, each forehand melting into the next, a loop, it's hypnotizing, it's supposed to be. The soundtrack says 'Don't Think Just See Don't Know Just Flow' over and over, if you turn it up. You're supposed to pretend it's you on the bell-clear screen with the fluid and egoless strokes. You're supposed to disappear into the loop and then carry that disappearance out with you, to play. The kids're lying there limp and splayed, supine, jaws slack, eyes wide and dim, a relaxed exhausted warmth - the flooring beneath the s.h.a.g is gently heated. Peter Beak is asleep with his eyes open, a queer talent E.T.A. seems to instill in the younger ones. Orin had been able to sleep with his eyes open at the dinner table, too, at home. on the gleaming sneaker's unscuffed toe, the no-nonsense flourishless follow-through so the stick ends up just in front of his gaunt face - Smith's cheeks have hollowed as he's aged, his face has collapsed at the sides, his eyes seem to bulge from the cheekbones that protrude as he inhales after impact, he looks desiccated, aged in hot light, performing the same motions over and over, for decades, his other hand floating up gently to grasp the stick's throat out in front of the face so he's flowed back into the Ready Stance all over again. No wasted motion, egoless strokes, no flourishes or tics or excesses of wrist. Over and over, each forehand melting into the next, a loop, it's hypnotizing, it's supposed to be. The soundtrack says 'Don't Think Just See Don't Know Just Flow' over and over, if you turn it up. You're supposed to pretend it's you on the bell-clear screen with the fluid and egoless strokes. You're supposed to disappear into the loop and then carry that disappearance out with you, to play. The kids're lying there limp and splayed, supine, jaws slack, eyes wide and dim, a relaxed exhausted warmth - the flooring beneath the s.h.a.g is gently heated. Peter Beak is asleep with his eyes open, a queer talent E.T.A. seems to instill in the younger ones. Orin had been able to sleep with his eyes open at the dinner table, too, at home.

Hal's fingers, long and light brown and still slightly sticky from tincture of benzoin, 46 46 are laced behind his upraised head on the pillow, cupping his own skull, watching Stan Smith, eyes heavy too. 'You feel as though you'll be going through the exact same sort of suffering at seventeen you suffer now, here, Kent?' are laced behind his upraised head on the pillow, cupping his own skull, watching Stan Smith, eyes heavy too. 'You feel as though you'll be going through the exact same sort of suffering at seventeen you suffer now, here, Kent?'

Kent Blott has colored shoelaces on his sneakers with 'Mr.-Bouncety-Bounce-Program'-brand bow-biters, which Hal finds extraordinarily artless and young.

Peter Beak snores softly, a small spit-bubble protruding and receding.

'But Blott surely you've considered this: Why are they all still here, then, if it's so awful every day?'

'Not every day,' Blott says. 'But pretty often it's awful.'

'They're here because they want the Show when they get out,' Ingersoll sniffs and says. The Show meaning the A.T.P. Tour, travel and cash prizes and endors.e.m.e.nts and appearance fees, match-highlights in video mags, action photos in glossy print-mags.

'But they know and we know one very top junior in twenty even gets all the way to the Show. Much less survives there long. The rest slog around on the satellite tours or regional tours or get soft as club pros. Or become lawyers or academics like everyone else,' Hal says softly.

'Then they stay and suffer to get a scholarship. A college ride. A white cardigan with a letter. Girl coeds keen on lettermen.'

'Kent, except for Wayne and Pemulis not one guy in there needs any kind of scholarship. Pemulis'll get a full ride anywhere he wants, just on test-scores. Stice's aunts'll send him anywhere even if he doesn't want to play. And Wayne's headed for the Show, he'll never do more than a year in the O.N.A.N.C.A.A.'s.' Blott's father, a cutting-edge E.N.T. oncologist, flew all over the world removing tumors from wealthy mucous membranes; Blott has a trust fund. 'None of that's the point and you guys know it.'

'They love the game, you're going to say.'

Stan Smith has switched to backhands.

'They sure must love something, Ingersoll, but how about for a second I say that's not Kent's point either. Kent's point's the misery in that room just now. K.B., I've taken part in essentially that same bitter b.i.t.c.hy kind of session hundreds of times with those same guys after bad P.M.s. In the showers, in the sauna, at dinner.'

'Very much b.i.t.c.hing also in the lavatories,' Arslanian says.

Hal unsticks his hair from his fingers. Arslanian always has a queer faint hot-doggish smell about him. 'The point is it's ritualistic. The b.i.t.c.hing and moaning. Even a.s.suming they feel the way they say when they get together, the point is notice we were all sitting there all feeling the same way together. together.'

'The point is togetherness?'

'Shouldn't there be violas for this part, Hal, if this is the point?'

'Ingersoll, I - '

Beak's cold-weather adenoids wake him periodically, and he gurgles and his eyes roll up briefly before they level out and he settles back, seeming to stare.

Hal creatively visualizes that Smith's velvety backhand is him slo-mo slapping Evan Ingersoll into the opposite wall. Ingersoll's parents founded the Rhode Island version of the service where you order groceries by TP and teenagers in fleets of station wagons bring them out to you, instead of supermarkets. 'What the point is is that we'd all just spent three hours playing challenges against each other in s.c.r.o.t.u.m-tightening cold, a.s.sailing each other, trying to take away each other's spots on the squads. Trying to defend them against each other's a.s.saults. The system's got inequality as an axiom. We know where we stand entirely in relation to one another. John Wayne's over me, and I'm over Struck and Shaw, who two years back were both over me but under Troeltsch and Schacht, and now are over Troeltsch who as of today is over Freer who's substantially over Schacht, who can't beat anyone in the room except Pemulis since his knee and Crohn's Disease got so much worse, and is barely hanging on in terms of ranking, and is showing incredible b.a.l.l.s just hanging on. Freer beat me 4 and 2 in the quarters of the U.S. Clays two summers ago, and now he's on the B-squad and five slots below me, six slots if Troeltsch can still beat him when they play again after that illness-default.'

'I am over Blott. I am over Ingersoll,' Idris Arslanian nods.

'Well Blott's just ten, Idris. And you're under Chu, who's on an odd year and is under Possalthwaite. And Blott's under Beak and Ingersoll simply by virtue of age-division.'

'I know just where I stand at all times,' muses Ingersoll.

SyberVision edits its visualization sequences with a melt-filter so Stan Smith's follow-through loops seamlessly into his backswing for the exact same next stroke; the transitions are gauzy and dreamlike. Hal struggles to hike himself up onto his elbows: 'We're all on each other's food chain. All of us. It's an individual sport. Welcome to the meaning of individual. individual. We're each deeply alone here. It's what we all have in common, this aloneness.' We're each deeply alone here. It's what we all have in common, this aloneness.'

'E Unibus Pluram Unibus Pluram,' Ingersoll muses.

Hal looks from face to face. Ingersoll's face is completely devoid of eyebrows and is round and dustily freckled, not unlike a Mrs. Clarke pancake. 'So how can we also be together? How can we be friends? How can Ingersoll root for Arslanian in Idris's singles at the Port Washington thing when if Idris loses Ingersoll gets to challenge for his spot again?'

'I do not require his root, for I am ready.' Arslanian bares canines.

'Well that's the whole point. How can we be friends? Even if we all live and eat and shower and play together, how can we keep from being 136 deeply alone people all jammed together?'

'You're talking about community. This is a community-spiel.'

'I think alienation,' Arslanian says, rolling the profile over to signify he's talking to Ingersoll. 'Existential individuality, frequently referred to in the West. Solipsism.' His upper lip goes up and down over his teeth.

Hal says, 'In a nutsh.e.l.l, what we're talking about here is loneliness.'

Blott looks about ready to cry. Beak's palsied eyes and little limb-spasms signify a troubling dream. Blott rubs his nose furiously with the heel of his hand.

'I miss my dog,' Ingersoll concedes.

'Ah.' Hal rolls onto one elbow to hike a finger into the air. 'Ah. But then so notice the instant group-cohesion that formed itself around all the p.i.s.sing and moaning down there why don't you. Blott. You, Kent. This was your question. The what looks like sadism, the skeletal stress, the fatigue. The suffering unites unites us. They want to let us sit around and b.i.t.c.h. Together. After a bad P.M. set we all, however briefly, get to feel we have a common enemy. This is their gift to us. Their medicine. Nothing brings you together like a common enemy.' us. They want to let us sit around and b.i.t.c.h. Together. After a bad P.M. set we all, however briefly, get to feel we have a common enemy. This is their gift to us. Their medicine. Nothing brings you together like a common enemy.'

'Mr. deLint.'

'Dr. Tavis. Scht.i.tt.'

'DeLint. Watson. Nw.a.n.gi. Thode. All Scht.i.tt's henchmen and henchwomen.'

'I hate them!' Blott cries out.

'And you've been here this long and you still think this hatred's an accident?'

'Purchase a clue Kent Blott!' Arslanian says.

'The large and economy-size clue, Blott,' Ingersoll chimes.

Beak sits up and says 'G.o.d no not with pliers! pliers!' and collapses back again, again with the spit-bubble.

Hal is pretending incredulity. 'You guys haven't noticed yet the way Scht.i.tt's whole staff gets progressively more foul-tempered and s.a.d.i.s.tic as an important compet.i.tive week comes up?'

Ingersoll up on one elbow at Blott. 'The Port Washington meet. I.D. Day. The Tucson WhataBurger the week after. They want us in absolute top shape, Blott.'

Hal lies back and lets Smith's ballet de se ballet de se loosen his facial muscles again, staring. 's.h.i.t, Ingersoll, we're all in top shape already. That's not it. That's the least of it. We're off the charts, shape-wise.' loosen his facial muscles again, staring. 's.h.i.t, Ingersoll, we're all in top shape already. That's not it. That's the least of it. We're off the charts, shape-wise.'

Ingersoll: 'The average North American kid can't even do one pull-up, according to Nw.a.n.gi.'

Arslanian points down at his own chest. 'Twenty-eight pull-ups.'

'The point,' Hal says softly, 'is that it's not about the physical anymore, men. The physical stuff's just pro forma. It's the heads they're working on here, boys. Day and year in and out. A whole program. It'll help your att.i.tude to look for evidence of design. They always give us something to hate, really hate together, as big stuff looms. The dreaded May drills during finals before the summer tour. The post-Christmas crackdown before Australia. The November freezathon, the snot-fest, the delay in upping the Lung and getting us under cover. A common enemy. I I may despise K. B. Freer, or' (can't quite resist) 'Evan Ingersoll, or Jennie Bash. But may despise K. B. Freer, or' (can't quite resist) 'Evan Ingersoll, or Jennie Bash. But we we despise Scht.i.tt's men, the double matches on top of runs, the insensitivity to exams, the repet.i.tion, the stress. The loneliness. But we get together and b.i.t.c.h, all of a sudden we're giving something group expression. A community voice. Community, Evan. Oh they're cunning. They give themselves up to our dislike, calculate our breaking points and aim for just over them, then send us into the locker room with an unstructured forty-five before Big Buddy sessions. Accident? Random happenstance? You guys ever see evidence of the tiniest lack of coolly calculated structure around here?' despise Scht.i.tt's men, the double matches on top of runs, the insensitivity to exams, the repet.i.tion, the stress. The loneliness. But we get together and b.i.t.c.h, all of a sudden we're giving something group expression. A community voice. Community, Evan. Oh they're cunning. They give themselves up to our dislike, calculate our breaking points and aim for just over them, then send us into the locker room with an unstructured forty-five before Big Buddy sessions. Accident? Random happenstance? You guys ever see evidence of the tiniest lack of coolly calculated structure around here?'

'The structure's what I hate the most of all,' Ingersoll says.

'They know what's going on,' Blott says, bouncing a little on his tailbone. 'They want want us to get together and complain.' us to get together and complain.'

'Oh they're cunning,' Ingersoll says. they're cunning,' Ingersoll says.

Hal curls himself a bit on one elbow to put in a small plug of Kodiak. He can't tell whether Ingersoll's being insolent. He lies there very slack, visualizing Smith pounding overheads down onto Ingersoll's skull. Hal some weeks back had acquiesced to Lyle's diagnosis that Hal finds Ingersoll - this smart soft caustic kid, with a big soft eyebrowless face and unwrinkled thumb-joints, with the runty, cuddled look of a Mama's boy from way back, a quick intelligence he squanders on an insatiable need to advance some impression of himself - that the kid so repels Hal because Hal sees in the kid certain parts of himself he can't or won't accept. None of this ever occurs to Hal when Ingersoll's in the room. He wishes him ill.

Blott and Arslanian are looking at him. 'Are you OK?'

'He is tired,' Arslanian says.

Ingersoll drums idly on his own ribcage.

Hal usually gets secretly high so regularly these days this year that if by dinnertime he hasn't gotten high yet that day his mouth begins to fill with spit - some rebound effect from B. Hope's desiccating action - and his eyes start to water as if he's just yawned. The smokeless tobacco started almost as an excuse to spit, sometimes. Hal's struck by the fact that he really for the most part believes what he's said about loneliness and the structured need for a we we here; and this, together with the Ingersoll-repulsion and spit-flood, makes him uncomfortable again, brooding uncomfortably for a moment on why he gets off on the secrecy of getting high in secret more than on the getting high itself, possibly. He always gets the feeling there's some clue to it on the tip of his tongue, some mute and inaccessible part of the cortex, and then he always feels vaguely sick, scanning for it. The other thing that happens if he doesn't do one-hitters sometime before dinner is he feels slightly sick to his stomach, and it's hard to eat enough at dinner, and then later when he does go off and get off he gets ravenous, and goes out to Father & Son Market for candy, or else floods his eyes with Murine and heads down to the Headmaster's House for another late dinner with C.T. and the Moms, and eats like such a feral animal that the Moms says it does something instinctively maternal in her heart good to see him pack it away, but then he wakes before dawn with awful indigestion. here; and this, together with the Ingersoll-repulsion and spit-flood, makes him uncomfortable again, brooding uncomfortably for a moment on why he gets off on the secrecy of getting high in secret more than on the getting high itself, possibly. He always gets the feeling there's some clue to it on the tip of his tongue, some mute and inaccessible part of the cortex, and then he always feels vaguely sick, scanning for it. The other thing that happens if he doesn't do one-hitters sometime before dinner is he feels slightly sick to his stomach, and it's hard to eat enough at dinner, and then later when he does go off and get off he gets ravenous, and goes out to Father & Son Market for candy, or else floods his eyes with Murine and heads down to the Headmaster's House for another late dinner with C.T. and the Moms, and eats like such a feral animal that the Moms says it does something instinctively maternal in her heart good to see him pack it away, but then he wakes before dawn with awful indigestion.

'So the suffering gets less lonely,' Blott prompts him.

Two curves down the hall in V.R.5, where the viewer's on the south wall and doesn't get turned on, the Canadian John Wayne's got LaMont Chu and 'Sleepy T.P.' Peterson and Kieran McKenna and Brian van Vleck.

'He's talking about developing the concept of tennis mastery,' Chu tells the other three. They're on the floor Indian-style, Wayne standing with his back against the door, rotating his head to stretch the neck. 'His point is that progress towards genuine Show-caliber mastery is slow, frustrating. Humbling. A question of less talent than temperament.'

'Is this right Mr. Wayne?'

Chu says '... that because you proceed toward mastery through a series of plateaus, so there's like radical improvement up to a certain plateau and then what looks like a stall, on the plateau, with the only way to get off one of the plateaus and climb up to the next one up ahead is with a whole lot of frustrating mindless repet.i.tive practice and patience and hanging in there.'

'Plateaux,' Wayne says, looking at the ceiling and pushing the back of his head isometrically against the door. 'With an X. Plateaux. Plateaux.'

The inactive viewer's screen is the color of way out over the Atlantic looking straight down on a cold day. Chu's cross-legged posture is text-book. 'What John's saying is the types who don't hang in there and slog on the patient road toward mastery are basically three. Types. You've got what he calls your Despairing type, who's fine as long as he's in the quick-improvement stage before a plateau, but then he hits a plateau and sees himself seem to stall, not getting better as fast or even seeming to get a little worse, and this type gives in to frustration and despair, because he hasn't got the humbleness and patience to hang in there and slog, and he can't stand the time he has to put in on plateaux, and what happens?'